Shrinkie Plastic Scribble Charms

 

Scribbling is satisfying. It just is! Just grabbing a pen and letting all the loopy out in whatever shade you like is nothing less that completely therapeutic, for both children and adults. Try it, it is entirely liberating!

 

What with being 21 months old, and with a new favourite colour every week (FYI, it is red right now, I know, terribly festive) Squirrel gets fired up at the very sight of his pens, and I swear he cracks his knuckles in a showdown type manner, ready to scribble the scribbies right out of him.
Such passion.

So, harnessing it is totally a thing for us. Wrapping paper, cut outs for cards, whatever the occasion, we scribble and make it work. So when I saw this activity from Rust & Sunshine I figured we could have scribbley fun in a keepsake gift form. I “ooh’d” outloud. Yep.

 

I ordered my shrinky plastic, I have to admit, its been so long since I used it, I expected to just go straight at it with felt tips. I was apparently wrong. Thats a nono, with the brand I ordered anyway.

So, as it just so happened that I had 2 sharpies in teal and blue, I reluctantly decided to let Squirrel have a shot with them, because I was in a I’m-not-wasting-money-on-flipping-shrinky-paper mood.

 

I was on him like a hawk. A big, hovering squawky hawky. He was completely unphased by my flapping and created some glorious scribbles on this mysterious transparent stuff! Scribbling aside, the shrinky plastic rocked his world for 10 whole minutes, lifting it up and looking through it AND his scribbles, flapping it around his head and experimented pressing his hand against it and then moving it with the other, as if it were moving independently. Mind blown, man.

 

 

That being said, I figured we would give the other pens a shot…

 

 

Nope. Thats a nu-uh. Oh well. It pooled, lesson learned.

So, with Squirrel keeping an eye as I cut them into large rectangles, curving the edges and hole punching them once each to create a place to thread them, we layered them out on a tray, and Squirrel and I watched through the oven as they curled up and shrunk!

I’m not going to lie, I was a bit more excited than he was, but still! We looked at the itty bitty ones compared to some unheated cut pieces and he felt the differences in their thickness and size, acknowledging the interaction with the oven, pointing at it saying “innn deeeer!” while holding them.

 

That is where Squirrels part in this activity came to an end, the rest was all me, but it didn’t take long, and these are going to make sweet little keepsakes for his family, so it was a lovely craft to do together with some great scientific observation thrown in too!

 

I raided my beading box, one container among the vaguely organised shelves and shelves of hoarded craft material and tools, and found bits and beads that would work, and in the right colours too! These are all easily purchased from craft and bead shops, and I daresay there is a world of choices online too.

 

I looped split rings into each of them, threading on several small colour matched beads, then a flat headed bead pin with a thread of white beads, and plied a loop into the split ring too. Jolly sweet.

I followed that by taking lengths of fine chain, threading them through and rejoining them with size matched split rings, and there we suddenly had a collection of hangable scribble charms, beautiful gifts for the family from Squirrel in the small gift packs that we are working on together.

 

These are so versatile too, they could easily be threaded onto full necklace chains, made into wind chimes (an activity I’m hoping to do in the Spring!), keyrings, you name it. We are very pleased with our charming little scribble pendants!

 

This post is part of Unit 3. Winter & Christmas.