Shrinky Dink necklace

Hey there!  A lot of you liked the necklace I made and shared on the Altenew blog.

A few of you had some questions, so here's the scoop on what I did:

• Got some shrink plastic.  Michael's had the Ink Jet Shrinky Dinks on clearance, so I picked that up.
• Stamp your image in StazOn ink.  I tried a few other inks, but this was the best.
• Color your image.  I was having trouble with Copics, so I used colored pencils.  Don't use too much pressure, or you will get ugly flecks of color everywhere! It's okay if your image is light, because the color intensifies when it shrinks.
• Carefully cut around, making sure to leave holes for jump rings.  I used a regular office hole punch.
• Shrink! The directions say to bake, but I was impatient and used my heat tool.  Once it was tiny, I placed an acylic block on top so it would stay flat as it cooled.

Since I have a lot of sheets left over, and considering they are meant to be used with your printer, I went ahead and made another necklace.

I was perusing Etsy and found some "girl on swing" necklaces.  Instead of just stealing their silhouettes, I made my own.  Dave was nice enough to take this picture of me for reference:

I used Photoshop to get the silhouette, and added a gradient.  Once printed on the Shrinky Dinks, I cut it out and punched the hole.  The office hole punch was too big, but luckily I also have a 1/8 inch.  I then blasted it with the heat tool, and got this:

I had forgotten to reduce the opacity (remember...it gets darker after shrinking!), and I didn't like how it looked with my arms together.  A little more tweaking (aka arm separation surgery), and here's the final result!

Aww, super cute!!

If for some reason, you want to make one of your own, here are my files.  I printed it at 60% opacity, and just over 3 inches tall.  They shrink to approx 1/3 the size, so the pendant is about an inch.

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