A different “TINY TUESDAY”!

My good friend Tracie (I mentioned her a few weeks back here) sent in a special TINY TUESDAY request last week. She thought it would be fun to feature a TINY craft, and she mentioned shrinky dinks. {WHICH ARE SO FUN OMG.}  I have put on my searching cap, and combed the interwebs for the very best shrinky dink-ing ideas I could find. And I couldn’t agree more–TINY crafts are so super fun! I’ll look for more fun TINY crafts to share–let me know if you have any ideas!

❤

Shrinky Dinks!

If you’re a child of the 1980s, you surely remember these!!

Awesome thing #1: the materials are FREE.

Awesome thing #2: YOU GET TO MAKE TINY THINGS!

A few tips to start:

You can buy shrinky dink plastic like this but you can also make your own. For free. Click through to this link for a great tutorial. The only thing I would add is that you may need to use a piece of sand paper to scratch up the plastic–in my experience the colors stay on better with the “ruffed up” plastic.

Also, I really like tracing over scientific or technical drawings. Since the SD plastic is clear, you can lay a drawing right on top and trace the design with total ease. Things that can be difficult to draw free hand are easy to trace on SDs! Try different kinds of writing utensils. Sharpies and colored pencils seem to work the best–the plastic locks their color in when the plastic shrinks.

Don’t forget to use your tools! Shaped hole punches like stars and hearts make for really fun accents on your SDs. Also, fancy edge scissors really make projects pop. Don’t forget to punch holes in your project BEFORE your shrink! A standard round hole punch makes a hole perfect for fitting a jump ring through once the plastic has shrunk down.

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“Classic Projects”

Rings and bracelets are pretty classic projects for SD. I like the fox ring that is made almost like a ‘spoon ring’ with the overlapping twist of plastic. I think that would help with stability and help prevent breakage. The image above is actually of a ring, but it would make a great bracelet–the wide cut and smooth opening in back would make it easy to slide around and off your wrist. And aren’t those birdies ADORABLE!?

These earrings are SO FUN. You could use dry erase markers to write words on the finished project–then you can change your thought bubble with your mood! That way you can go from “GO AWAY” to “HIP HIP HOORAY”!

I’m totally smitten with these hand necklaces. Using hands to spell out words is such a fun idea. This is another thing that might be fun to trace !

Business card shrinky dinks! Click through the name above for a tutorial on how these are made. The tutorial uses printable sheets of SD but you could just as easily use an ink stamp to mark these. Handwritten ones would be pretty great, too–and more unique! What a great little advertisement to include with your merchandise!

I think this may be my favorite new (to me) idea! BUTTONS!!! OMG. Just think of the possibilities! One of the things I’ve struggled with when I make my weird dresses (see this post) is that I have a hard time finding buttons that are, well, weird enough! NOW I CAN MAKE MY OWN!! I might have to make a new dress soon just to make these wonderful buttons!

Here is a really great tutorial on how to make blooms from SD! This came from Kathy Sheldon’s book Shrink Shrank Shrunk (full of all sorts of other fun stuff to make!!)

TINY PROJECTS!

Here are some great ideas for leftover TINY pieces of SD plastic.

Fancy tops for straight pins!

Beads!

(These remind me of paper beads!)

Some other small things you can try making with scraps are guitar picks, stitch markers (for knit and crochet), or any manner of earrings…like these below. OMG.

Hope you enjoyed this special crafty edition of TINY TUESDAY!

Let me know if you have a TINY craft you’d like me to feature!

❤