Shrinky Dinks Fun

Way in the way back, August to be precise, the lovely Brittany of Vavoom Vintage wrote a wonderful tutorial for making Pyrex Novelty Brooches using Shrinky Dinks.  If you didn't grow up in the 80's and have no idea what the heck Shrinky Dinks are, they are sheets of plastic that you can draw on and color, cut them out then pop them in the oven and they will shrink down in size and become hard.  Right after I read her post, I jumped on over to Amazon and bought me a pack.  That was a long time ago, I realize, but I just finally decided to play around with them. 

I searched around on google for a bit looking for design ideas.  My first idea was to find a cool cupcake picture to try to recreate.  If you don't know, Cupcake is my Chihuahua and I'm totally obsessed with her so having a brooch with a cupcake on it would be my little tribute to her.  Instead, I stumbled onto an even better picture and this is what I made from it.

Check it out, its a Chihuahua with a cupcake.  How totally perfect is that? (Yep, I like, totally grew up in the 80's, for sure)  As soon as I saw it, I just knew I had to make it into a brooch.  I changed the coloring to be grey and tan, to look more like my little fur baby and changed up the cupcake a little bit too.  I absolutely adore how she turned out and I can't wait to wear her with pride.

Speaking of the little ball of fur, here she is helping me with sketches for the other 2 brooches I made.  I was so happy with how the first one came out, I couldn't stop and had to make some more.  I chose to do one with a classic WWII propaganda image "V for Victory".  Since I draw so much of my fashion and knitting inspiration from the 1940's, I though it only fitting to add a bit of 40's memorabilia to my ever growing brooch collection.

It's not perfect by any means, if you ever saw my hand writing in real life though you'd think this was absolutely stunning.  I'm pleased with the results and look forward to wearing it often.

To round out this list of obsession based brooches, you know I had to make one that was knitting related.  I think this sufficiently sums up how I feel about knitting, don't you?  I think I might even paint this design on a knitting project bag.  You know, cause I need more crafting in my life, right? 

I colored all of these with colored pencils I picked up at Jo-ann's and used E-6000 glue to adhere the pin backs.  That glue is amazing, I've used it with other hand made brooches before and they have held up wonderfully.  I had so much fun coloring these and channeling my inner child, it was a great way to spend a snowy winter day inside.  I'll be looking for inspiration to make more soon, I'm sure.  If you were going to make some, what kind of pictures would you want to color?

XOXO,
Cherry