Make: DIY Shrink Plastic Brooches or Pins {Updated Step By Step Tutorial}

Do you remember shrink dinks? Those little bits of plastic that came in cereal boxes? Haranguing an adult into turning the oven, putting the shrinky dink in and watching as the flimsy plastic contorted, then laid flat, finally emerging as tiny, hard work of art! Well, that shrink plastic technology is alive and well and just perfect for making jewellery. If you are not familiar with shrink plastic, it can be coloured with pencils or textas, stamped or even printed with the design of your choice and after a quick bake in the oven it shrinks to around 1/3^rd of its original size and becomes up to 9 times thicker. Which leaves you with a durable work of art, genius! We made a bunch of brooches but you could easily make necklaces, earrings, keychains or home décor items. If you are going for something like a necklace, that will need a hole for a jump ring, be sure to punch a hole (with a regular hole punch) before you shrink or the plastic will be too hard. Check out these ones from my first go round…

A year ago, I wrote an article on making shrink plastic brooches for Indie Love Magazine (Issue 1). But since then I have discovered a trick or two and wanted to share! So I have re written this to include all my new tricks and a bit of a fail. I am jumping out of my skin with excitement about my new discoveries! My original  project used regular shrink plastic and Sharpie markers, even a gold metallic, which worked beautifully. The new thing I found was ink jet printable. Yes, printable! Which is super cool because I am not really artistic and it really took effort to colour the first lot in! Mr Ask is quite an accomplished graphic designer and I love to put him to work. Actually, we quite enjoy working together on these projects and Mr Ask made a few of his own pins. My original versions were sorta shiny by nature but for the ink jet printing to work, this is uber matte.

Which brings me to an epic fail. I heard that you can use Mod Podge Dimensional Magic to create a shiny, domed top to your shinks that looks a lot like a resin overlay. You squeeze it straight from the tube on to your shrink and let it cure for 24 hours and then you have a pro looking pin! I was pretty excited until we tried it. After a few hours we looked in on our shinks and some of the mod podge had broken surface tension and leaked off. We cleaned up and left everything to cure. Some cracked, some looked dull or blurry and basically it was crap! The only exception was some very small avocado pins I made for my sewing gals. They looked pretty cool, not perfect but not too shitty either. I continued the quest and experimented with using less and less and even using two coats. Whilst some had a smooth coat, the colours were off. I decided to skip it and roll the matte! I was so mad with the whole thing, I only have pics of me applying it and not of the awful results! If you have tips about using this, I’d love to hear them…

All you need to do is create your original digital design and go! If you are more hand drawn, draw and scan. Remember your image will come out about 1/3^rd of the original design, so be sure to make your designs big enough! Mr Ask loves a bit of precision and he says to make your design 264.5% bigger than you want them. The shrink plastic we bought had some info about how to pale down the colours because they will deepen and even change after shrinking, so a few tests on scraps are probably a sound idea. Make sure you get a generous amount of shrink paper, just in case. Sometimes you need to tweak the colour or size and sometimes shrinks will mess up in the shrinking and stick to themselves. We only had one that failed in the oven out of about 30 different designs (remember we had Mod Podge failure and restarted). Plus it is totally addictive and you will want to make more and everyone will want one!

You’ll need:

• Shrink plastic suitable for ink jet printers
• Ink Jet printer that will accept a thicker paper or cardstock
• Brooch or pin back blanks
• Scissors
• Adhesive (we recommend Tarzan’s Grip or E6000 because they are flexible & adhere to most surfaces)
• Oven

Gather Supplies

We used white Shrink Jet brand shrink plastic, just make sure it’s suitable for printing. You’ll find it in craft/art/scrapbooking stores and online we got ours on eBay. While you’re there, have a look for brooch backs too. I found it hard to find the pin sort of backs but I found and bought them from here. You’ll need scissors to cut out your shrinks and glue for the backs, Tarzans Grip, E6000 or hot glue should do the trick.

Get Creative!

Use whatever design program you like to make up your designs. The Shrink Jet plastic has instructions for their own thing and how to pale down your colours but Mr Ask was on it. He used some form of photo shop or illustrator to work his magic and arranged the images on the page in the most economical way.

Cut and Shape

Time to cut out your design. If you need to make a hole for a jump ring, don’t forget to do it! We found it easiest to roughly cut around the design with large scissors and then trim it up with small, embroidery style scissors. The shrink plastic can tear if you are forcing a cut, so tiny scissors are uber helpful. We also tried using our (very much older) silhouette machine to cut things using registration marks. It almost worked but even with a new blade and settings for the thickest media, double cuts etc, it didn’t cut all the way through. If you have a newer model, it might be worth trying.

Shrink It Real Good…..

Follow the directions that come with your shrink plastic. For ours, we preheated our oven to 200C and lined a baking sheet with baking paper. Then lay the shrink plastic, coloured side up on the lined baking sheet and put it in the oven for 1-3mins. Basically, wait till it curls up all crazy, flattens out and then wait 30secs before removing. To ensure flatness, immediately press down on the image with a pad of paper (or similar, just don’t burn yourself! We use a paperback book that had seen better days) for one minute. Remove your super cute image and wonder at its tiny sweetness!

Plastic to (wearable) Fantastic

The trick to gluing brooch backs on to things, is to have enough glue to bead up through the little holes in the brooch back but not so much that it gets in the way of the pin opening turner thing. Also, if you are making these for yourself, it’s nice to think about which side you want the brooch opening to be, especially if you have preferences. Lay down a good bead of glue, press in the brooch clip and allow to dry. Most gooey adhesives like 24hrs to cure but hot glue will only need 10 mins or so.

Now you can accessorise everything! A plain (or not so plain) t-shirt can be a glorious canvas for your hand made, wearable art! Make matching earrings in a snap. Stand in the sun and say “Yeah, I made it.” OMG just think of the amazing possibilities! We have just propped open the gate so that you may run free. And if you are wondering how would one wear this creations, just strike a pose………..