Daily Idea #313: Shrinky Dinks

Remember shrinky dinks? If you don’t or have never seen nor heard of them, they are plastic designs that you color in and then place in the toaster oven to turn into much much smaller designs. They could be worn as earrings, on a necklace, or sometimes even as a keychain. Watching the magic of your regular sized art shrinking down was the best part of the whole process.

For today’s daily idea, we are going to make our own shrinky dinks with recycled materials. You’ll need a plastic egg carton (Trader Joe’s usually has some small packs of eggs in plastic), sharpies, scissors, a hole puncher if you want to hang them from something, parchment paper, a baking tray, and an oven.

First heat the oven to 300 degrees. Then cut out each plastic cup from the carton. Try to make the top edges as smooth as possible. Use the sharpies to color in/design a pattern on the inside of the cup. Punch a hole into the cup near the rim. Place the egg cups on the baking sheet lined with parchment paper and pop them into the oven for about 3 minutes. Make sure you turn on the oven light so you can see the magic happen! Carefully remove them from the oven and let them cool. When they are cool to touch, use some twine, a small chain, yarn, whatever you’d like to display your recycled pieces.