Part 3: More experimentation in the Shrinky Dink Test Lab

Make rings out of #6 recyclable plastic

Tomorrow: How to successfully seal your shrinkies.. maybe…

Part 3 – More experiments:

1) What happens if you coat your shrinky in clear coat, PRIOR to shrinking?
Let’s use the lightening effect to our advantage for an interesting watercolor effect. And create an opaque effect! Note, we did get some cloudyness where the spray top coat was on too thick, but it IS unusual!
Experiment in coating with clear coat prior to shrinkage
shrinky5.2.1

2) Let’s color on the back, then spray the back with paint – in this case a black design, sprayed white. Worked really well. If the paint doesn’s protect your design enough, you can now seal it with whatever you would seal the paint with.
Charm painted white on the back

3) Let’s color a scrap piece from the side of the box (what a pain!) and make a ring out of it! Fun, silly, and please don’t burn your fingers (follow the same basic instructions as the glass marker project.
Making a ring out of a scrap piece

4) Let’s see how large a shrinky we can make if we use the whole top of the to-go box, and we’ll use the opaque technique from test (1) to make it an opaque suncatcher. I’m going to hang this with several others as a homemade mobile.
Robot Suncatcher

5) Let’s do one with colored pencils! (note: you have to sand the surface to get the pencils to write, I did this with watercolor pencils because that’s what i had on hand.) Not bad, but i don’t like how the clear plastic looks where I roughed up the surface.
Colored Penciled Shrinky

Coming Next: How you REALLY should seal your shrinkies.
(See All Shrinky Dinky Test Lab!)

Oh yeah, and you know me, i need validation that I didn’t write all this up for it never to be seen by human eyes… so don’t forget that posting a comment on one of the posts in this series enters you in the drawing to win some of the output of the experiments!