Upcycled Shrinky Dinks

[photo by SEWphisticate used with permission]

Genevieve over at SEWphisticate has an awesome tutorial on turning plastic take out containers or cups into shrinky dinks! It turns out that #6 plastic, a type that many cities do not recycle, will shrink beautifully in the oven!

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For her first attempts, she cut the plastic into shapes and punched holes to make shrunken pendants. She said these shapes turned out pretty distorted. After some experimentation and fine-tuning, she came up with a method for turning out lovely plastic rings, like the ones above! I think they’d made really cool earrings or maybe you could wire them together into a mobile?

To achieve the effect, she first cut the cups horizontally to create 1 1/4″ tall, skinny rings. She stuck those into the oven at 325°F on a piece of parchment until they had melted down to form rigid, thick circles of plastic.

Genevieve is a seamstress, a jeweler, and the mastermind behind SEWphisticate. You can check out her detailed tutorial full of awesome pictures over on the SEWphisticate blog!

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