Shrinky Dink Tutorial

I learned about this fabulous little Shrinky Dink trick from one of the stores I teach at and wanted to share it with all of you. I apologize for a few blurry pictures but I am too lazy to retake them. LOL. Do you ever find yourself wondering if an stamped image as a Shrinky Dink would shrink down to the 'right' size for your project? Well, here's how you'll know!

Step 1: cut yourself a strip of Shrinky Dink plastic to your desired length. I figure I'm never going to shrink something bigger than this 8" ruler so I cut an 8" x 1.5" piece of Shrinky Dink plastic. I sanded it in a cross hatch direction, per the instructions. Then, I took my ruler and marked lines at every half inch and full inch as seen in the photo above.

Step 2: Using your heat gun, shrink up your 'ruler.' Take care to shrink it evenly, moving your gun from left to right, for even shrinkage. It will crinkle up on you in the process. If it gets too crinkled, straighten it out a bit and finish shrinking it up. Mine kind of crumpled into itself near the center so halfway through, I sort of straightened it quickly, then took the heat gun back to it. Right after you're done, use a wood block or some other flat object to flatten your ruler out. It might not be perfectly straight but that's okay.

Here's a picture of my completed, shrunked ruler.

Step 3: Stamp your image onto another piece of Shrinky Dink plastic. I used Staz-On. Color the image in with colored pencil. Cut your image out. If you want to make a hole to thread ribbon or something through, now's the time to do it. Use a hole punch to make a hole. I would recommend using the size that makes holes in notebook paper. Remember, it's going to shrink to a tiny hole. You need it big enough to thread something through. Here's a picture of my stamped, colored Shrinky Dink image, before being heated, and measured against my real life sized ruler.

Now you want to heat your image to shrink it down. Here's a picture of my Shrinky Dink'ed image against my Shrinky Dink ruler. You'll see that in the picture above, the image before shrinking measured about 1 3/4". On the Shrinky Dink'ed ruler, it measure the same!

Isn't that cool?! Nifty trick, I say! Now I want all y'all to go make a Shrinky Dink'd card and share your link here. You can do that by leaving a comment with a link to your card on an online gallery somewhere.

Now I'll also leave you with a new Shrinky Dink'd card I made using the A Muse Party Time and Coffee Break clear sets with an Elzybells image.

All supplies, except the Shrinky Dink plastic, from A Muse Artstamps, Inc