Shrinky-Dink

Becca's birthday party (in November) had a butterfly theme. We sent the guests home with just a few goodies: butterfly stickers, gingerbread cookies, and ornament/sun catchers they decorated themselves. The ornaments were made with shrinky-dink, a plastic sheet that shrinks and thickens in the oven.


It's really a simple process:

• Trace and cut circles of shrinky-dink.
• Trace chosen design on smooth side with permanent marker.
• Make a hole in the top with a standard hole puncher.
• Decorate rough side with colored pencils.
• Shrink according to package directions.
• Hang with 1/8" ribbon.

Below is an illustration of the original size of the design, and a suncatcher after shrinking (see the coin for scale).
This kind of project has multiple applications. We made ornaments for our Jesse tree last year, and Marianna made Christmas and Hannukah ornaments for many of her friends this season.
-

You might think it's difficult to find the right design to trace, but it's not. Use Google images to search for coloring pages of a specific design (butterfly, candy cane, angel), and you'll get many choices that can be copied to a document. Then manipulate to make it the size you need. Easy! (I got this idea from Danielle Bean's website--she finds pictures to put on top of birthday cakes.)