Columnist: Anna Ravenelle
Editor-in-Chief: Yasmin Alameddine
While discussing my plans for this week’s column at dinner with my friend Mary, I was appalled to find out that she had never experienced the magic that is Shrinky Dinks.
For those who, like Mary, were deprived of the wonder of Shrinky Dinks, let me lay it out for you: Draw/color on Shrinky Dink plastic (aka any #6 plastic) then cut out the design and have an adult (read: older sister who probably should not have been using the oven either) put them in the oven for you and then watch as they shriveled up to 1/3 the size they originally were! Then put them into a baggy with all the other ones you’ve made and promptly forget about them. Having the ‘dinks was not nearly the fun as making them was.
So, with my basic knowledge of Shrinky Dinks, I decided to tackle the Shrinky Dink Ring.
The six steps listed in the above tutorial seemed pretty simple:
1. Acquire Shrinky Dink plastic
Simple. I called my mom last week and had her send up the remnants of my childhood kit. When I opened the package, I was greeted not only by the ghosts of past, unfinished projects (a testament to how truly terrible they were, because shrinking them, as aforementioned, was the best part), but every Shrinky Dink I have ever made. Ever. You’d think she was sick of keeping all my childhood projects or something.
For anyone else, any craft store should carry the plastic. Hobby Lobby, Michael’s, AC Moore, you name it. Or just grab a pre-made sandwich from Cascadeli in those little plastic boxes — those should work fine.
2. Measure/Cut
In my room I have an x-acto knives, a huge bottle of mod podge, 25 sponge brushes, and a yard of sequined fabric, but no ruler. Typical. Next best thing? Index cards and post-it notes. I wanted it to be about six inches long pre-shrink, according to this ring size conversion calculator, and about an inch wide, so I set my 3in sticky-notes side by side and then added another inch (for good measure). Then, I outlined it with sharpie and cut it out with my x-acto knife and then evened it out with scissors. So far, so good. But so far, so easy.
3. Decorate (!)
Decorating is where the true artistry of ‘dinking comes out (Second only to watching them shrink, of course). Some, like the original tutorial maker, use rubber stamps, others print their images. Sharpie and colored pencils are what I grew up using. So, I decorated my ring (on the roughed up side of the plastic) with a simple flower pattern I traced out of my (no shame) Disney “Perfect Princesses” coloring book with fine Sharpie.
I messed up a few times and the shade of the Sharpie didn’t seem to be that vibrant, so at this point I was getting nervous. In the end, I had an overcrowded floral mess masterpiece.
4. Find ring form
To make the ring shape out of the plastic, you need something roughly the size of the finger you want the ring to fit. I tried a bunch of things — Expo marker, glue stick, mascara tubes, until I finally found my “Babylips” chapstick, and it (kind of) worked!
5. Shrink your ‘Dink (!!!)
Easily the best part of the process, poppin’ your dink into the oven and watch it go, go go! I realized today, however, that watching a strip of flowers shrink and curl up is way less fun than Hello Kitty shrink.
The plastic curled up and shrunk way earlier than I thought it would (I almost missed it!) and once it had flattened back out, I pulled it out of the oven and very, veeeery quickly tried (and failed) to…
6. Form the ring
I had about ten seconds to turn it from flat plastic to a curved ring. And it didn’t work out too well… Forget the ring form, I was just trying to get that thing to curl at all before it cooled too much.
Not too bad, right? That’s what I thought, until I realized how hard it was to reshape it. The second time (after I put it back in the oven for 30 seconds) didn’t work; it got worse, with random corners and nowhere near as rounded as I needed. After the third time, I realized my strip was way too long. And after I sawed off the extra bits (my x-acto knife will probably never forgive me), I popped it back into the oven and got this:
After five or six re-shapings total, I thought it might snap if I tried again. It’s not exactly circular, but so what? It (kind of) fits on my ring finger and the design isn’t as bad as it looked pre-shrink. I probably won’t wear it too often (read: ever), but isn’t that what Shrinky Dinks are for — to be made and then promptly forgotten again?
Overall score: 7.5/10
