Cool Craft for Kids & Teens, Shrinky Dinks Animal Key Chains

Animal Lovers Kids and Teen Craft

Here’s another take on Shrinky Dinks crafts. Supplies and steps for these horse key chains are the same as the fashion key chains. I taught After School Enrichment classes for several years, and often had repeat students so, though projects may have used similar mediums and supplies, I varied content. Some kids traced patterns from scrapbooking paper while others made up their own designs. They used jump rings to attach pieces and Wikki Stix to create manes. Horses are just the start; templates for any animal can be created.

Shrinky Dinks Animal 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 animal
• 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 an animal and parts on a piece of paper and add small circles where the pieces will join. Add a small circle to the place where the key ring will later be attached. (On the horse, the key ring hangs from the middle of the back.) 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 patterns and designs and add animal’s facial features.
3. Punch holes where small circles are drawn. Be careful to leave space between holes and edges so edges don’t split.
4. Cut out animal 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 manes or fur with yarn or Wikki Stix. Feed Wikki Stix through holes and twist to secure. OR feed yarn through holes and knot and trim.
9. Find the opening where the key ring is to be attached and feed a jump ring through that hole. Attach the key ring to 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.