Shrinky Dinking !

These images can be enlarged, hopefully it works for you unless you're using some kind of blocker thing to prevent enlargement.

Well I've succumbed to the Shrinky Dink trend ! I stumbled upon it while perusing Etsy and its altered art. Since I'm unable to really get into my art while the house is for sale, I figured it wouldn't hurt to see what some of the new stuff was on Etsy. Along with Steampunk, felting, and other wonderful items, Shrinky Dinks were quite a popular item. I do like charms and making them so why not give this new fun thing a try.

Off to Michaels I went and found Shrinky Dinks For Computer Inkjet Printers. Comes with 6 - 8x10 sheets in bright white.

I quickly learned that when using something I've never used before....do a test try first ! Thank goodness I did with the Shrinky Ds.

The instructions were quite clear except they didn't say WHY you need to cut your images before shrinking them. Your shrunk pieces turn into thickish hard things that sound like poker chips when tossed onto a table, they actually kinda feel good in the hands when you toss them around. I thought it would be easier to cut them after but NOPE. Perhaps my Dremel could be used and I'll give it a try, just not right now. Hey, I've never been Shrinky Dinking before so I didn't know how hard they got.

The best images to use are those that DON'T have a lot of dark colors. The chandelier pic. is an image I took of my parents chandelier before their house sold. I decided to see what would happen if I shrunk it, and as you can see in the images the bottom part of chandelier didn't show up as well as the top. Oh well, at least I know now.
The Metropolis images were already small to begin with, slightly larger than a postage stamp and as you can see they are much smaller ! --maybe little earrings for those Blythe dolls on Etsy ? Oops, did I just give some of you an idea what to do with your tiny Shrinky Dink pieces you thought you could never use ? No problem, I hope you do use the idea :)
The cherry blossom image is one of my favs. It's a closeup shot of one of my fav. trees on my parents property, now sold. But although I like the pinkness of this image, it's still too small for my liking, and I had wanted to cut out the individual flowers to make a bunch of charms.

So I was just playing around to see what Shrinky Dinking was like, and I quite enjoyed it. I'm happy to have Shrunky Dunked and look forward to my next batch of treasures. Lots of ideas going around my brain and can't wait to list some in my Etsy shop --but not until we've moved and my new art room is ready to roll ! --September sometime.

Hope my wee version of how S. Dunking works helped you to give it a whirl. Let me know how it goes :) xo