Shrinky dinks

Do you remember shrinky dinks? They were so much fun! When I was a kid (in the 70s), we bought kits with pre-drawn images which we would color. Now you can buy plain shrinky-dink "paper" and draw your own images on it, or use the inkjet paper and print things from your computer. I even found instructions for making your own shrinky dinks with the styrofoam that comes in meat packages. Ew.

When Malayna started preschool last year, she had a very hard time being away from home. Sometimes she would be okay, but mostly she would get upset when I had to leave her at school. I wanted to give her something to make her feel better when she was at school, so I made her a necklace from shrinky dink paper that said, "mommy loves you." She wore it every day that she went to school, up until last week. It broke in half, so she hasn't worn it for a few days. She would come home from school and say, "I don't even care! I felt my neck when I was in school and I didn't feel it there and I didn't even care!" Hmmm. She mentioned it so much that I think she actually did care.

{Playing with shrinky dinks and sharpies last year.}

Yesterday I printed a few designs on the inkjet shrinky dink paper. It took a few trials and errors before I got them to the correct size. It's not as easy as it would seem - sometimes the paper curls in on itself while it's baking and it won't unstick, or the images get printed on the wrong side of the paper (duh), or the colors don't look quite right. Here's what I ended up with:

 

{Loved.}