Thursday, March 3, 2011

Shrinky Dinks

I've become a scrounge.... I'm digging through garbage:)... in a way. At my school I teach a remediation class during lunch. The students have 45 minutes to work on assignments, take tests, write essays, etc. At the end of the 45 minutes they are given a box lunch. Well, one of my co-workers told me that you could make "shrinky dinks" out of the plastic lunch boxes. Do you know what shrinky dinks are? Well, you're about to find out!
So, I took the boxes and cut the plastic top and bottom out of them to make square sheets. Then I used the die cutting machine at my school to cut out the shape of a clover. I used my circle cutter to cut the circles in the middle. This piece of plastic is about 4" square and the circles in the middle are about the size of a dime.

The next step is to bake them in the oven at 325 degrees. Put them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. They will cook for about 3-4 minutes. They will curl up and shrink. When they start to lie flat again, they are done.
When you are finished, you will end up with these cute clear embellishments. They are much smaller than the original size. They are now stiff and about the thickness of a nickel. You can tell by the size of my thumb and ribbon how small they are!
You can use them on your scrapbook pages, or make jewelry, or on a cute banner like I did here.

The science teacher in me is ready to experiment! Let's see what I come up with next!!!
-Anisa