36 Things: Make Jewelry using Shrinky Dinks

I am not entirely sure when I came up with the plan to make jewelry with shrinky dinks. I've seen it from time to time in shops or online and I've always been attracted to the little bits of brightly colored plastic.

In fact, I am not using actual "Shrinky Dinks"--I am using something called "Shrink Art!", which is all I could find at the craft store that came with larger, plain sheets of the shrink film. It was a silly kit with ugly drawing ideas and a little box of colored pencils. The real "Shrinky Dinks" at the same store had the designs already drawn on them and were already cut out so you could make your own, artistic-free jewelry. I've since discovered you can use any old number 6 plastic, usually take away containers from restaurants. For some reason, I don't really want to try this option. You can also buy all manner of Shrinky Dink plastic sheets online, including sheets that you can print on with an ink jet printer!

The little Bluebird of Happiness up top was my first attempt. Below are my latest images. These three are some of my favorites. I still need to seal the drawn on side, otherwise the images may scratch.
I've only used 3 sheets so far and have 4 or 5 more, so hopefully my technique will get better. The colors come out super bright when they shrink. My open studio is this weekend. Hopefully I'll have my design issues resolved by then to try and sell some jewelry and see how people like them in person before trying to sell them on Etsy.

One more thing down in my 36 Things list, but I have a feeling I will be making these for a while.