Cool Kids & Teen Craft, Shrinky Dinks Fashion Key Chains

Another Snow Day Kids and Teen Craft

Did you create key chains, jewelry and keepsakes with Shrinky Dinks when you were a kid? I did and my kids did, too. So, when discussing ideas for After School Enrichment classes with a camp art director, she suggested this cool craft. The 2nd – 5th graders in my ASE class loved tracing patterns from wrapping paper, scrapbooking paper, and fashion magazines onto their own templates. They colored patterns, added facial features, cut out body parts, and punched holes so the baked pieces could be assembled with jump rings. They added Wikki Stix hair and a key ring and–voila–they had their own Shrinky Dinks Fashion key chains. More template ideas: kids playing sports, dancers, and superheroes. Be creative!

Shrinky Dinks Fashion Key Chains

Supplies:

• Shrinky Dinks or a similar material. Want to make your own shrink-it sheets? Click here to see how.
• colored pencils
• template for body
• patterned wrapping paper, scrapbooking paper, magazine cutouts, or patterns to trace
• scissors
• hole puncher
• jump rings
• jewelry pliers or needle nose pliers
• Wikki Stix or yarn
• key chain ring

Steps:

1. Draw a body and parts on a piece of paper and add small circles where the pieces will join. Trace outline of body and body parts on Shrinky Dinks sheets. All tracing and coloring should be on “rough” side of SD sheets.
2. Using colored pencils, color clothing patterns and add facial features.
3. Punch holes where circles are indicated, being careful to leave space between holes and edges so edges don’t split.
4. Cut out body parts.
5. Follow Shrinky Dinks instructions to bake cut-outs.
6. After baking, gently flatten pieces that curl up.
7. Join pieces using jump rings.
8. Create hair with yarn or Wikki Stix. Feed Wikki Stix through holes on top of head and twist to secure. OR feed yarn through holes and knot and trim.
9. Feed a jump ring into middle hole on top of head and then feed key chain ring into that jump ring.

Tip: Shrinky Dinks shrink A LOT! Keep this in mind and trace a template large enough that when parts are baked and shrink, the key chain isn’t the size of a peanut! Please keep this in mind when drawing circles that will be punched out. You don’t want the holes to be so small, a jump ring won’t fit.