Shrinky Dinks Gone Wrong

It's been quite some time since I last made a new batch of bookmarks, and with just one left, I have been wanting to get a new crop together. So earlier this summer, I pulled out my shrinky dinks and got to work drawing up dragonlings. Then they sat (and sat and sat) until a few weeks ago when I decided to take them along to a crafting event (they are very portable!) and color them in.

Well, imagine my shock and horror when I baked them only to discover...my lines had disappeared! Turns out I had drawn on one side and colored on the the other so when they baked up and became opaque, you could no longer see the outlines. Oops.



Two survived the tragic incident because I had gone over the lines, thinking they were faint (now I know why). Those are the two on the top left in this pic. The three on the bottom right show my experiment with drawing the lines in after the fact (too sloppy, imo) and the ones on the far right, top row and far left, bottom row, show how they came out of the oven. Just tragic.

Sadly, the tragedy does not end there. Determined to get some bookmarks made, I sat down over the long weekend to make some more. I drew and colored (on the right side this time!) nearly a dozen dragonlings. Only this time when I baked them, they came out about twice as big as the last batch. Same paper. Same pencils. Same oven. Maybe I had the temperature set differently?

In a moment of pure stupidity bravery, I threw them ALL back in the oven for another 5 min or so. And attached them to the cardboard. (Not to mention singeing the cardboard thus making the house smell like burnt cardboard and convincing my husband that I was determinedly burning the house down.) So now I have nearly a dozen shrinky dinks that are not only larger than expected (they didn't even have the decency to shrink more!) but have bits of cardboard embedded in the plastic. Looks like I will be going back to backing the little guys with pretty papers. It's time consuming and labor intensive, but it will hide the cardboard. : )