Prior to heating, the plastic sheets can be colored with felt-tip pens, acrylic paint, colored pencils, etc. The kits we used to use as kids came with rough sided plastic that you could easily decorate with the included colored pencils.

Shrinky Dinks Create and Wear Cool Stuff Craft Kit - Argos

Preheat the oven to 325°F then put your Shrinky Dink into the oven for 1-3 minutes or until it’s flat.

You may also want to take a toaster oven outside to avoid fumes inside, or preheat the grill and shrink them in there. In 2009, an art therapy supervision class at Emporia State University explored the use of Shrinky Dinks in art therapy. We would put them on a cookie sheet and then my mom put them in the oven for us and she'd turn on the light so we could watch them shrink inside the heated oven.

Shrinky Dinks - Etsy UK Plastic Shrinky Dinks - Etsy UK

It’s environmentally friendly to use something you already have around the house instead of throwing it into the landfill. The toy set itself was invented in 1973 by Betty Morris and Kathryn Bloomberg, who were devising a boy scouts toy for their children. Kits came with pre-printed coloring sheets of your favorite characters (I was partial to the Care Bears or Rainbow Bright) and a set of colored pencils.If you plan to make it into a charm, it’s a good idea to use a hole puncher to put a hole in the plastic before you shrink it. However, oily or waxy substances (such as cheap colored pencils, [ clarification needed] crayons or oil paint) are not suitable because they melt or burn in high heat.