Shrinky Dinks Ornaments

I remember making Shrinky Dinks as a kid, so I love to make them with my children.  It is so much fun to watch them shrink to little trinkets in the oven. 

Did you know that you can buy plain sheets of Shrinky Dinks plastic to make your own designs?  This is our second year using the plain sheets to make ornaments for our Christmas tree.  They are super easy to make and definitely one of a kind!

First, I cut an 8"x10" sheet of Shrinky Dinks plastic in half and gave one half to C and the other half to R.  They used colored pencils to create whatever they wanted on the rough side of the plastic.  Here are the designs they drew before we put them in the oven:

C drew the winter scene with the snowman and candy canes.  R said that her drawing is a vacuum cleaner with the night sky above!!!!  I'm not sure what a vacuum has to do with Christmas, but I told them they could draw whatever they wanted and she did!  I actually have R's sideways in this photo; you can see it the right way further down in this post.

Next, I punched a hole at the top of each sheet of plastic.  This is important because without the hole, they can't be hung on the tree! 

Then, I placed the sheets on a cookie sheet covered with tinfoil and put the sheet in a preheated 325 degrees oven for 1-5 minutes (ours took 4 minutes but the time depends on the size of the Shrinky Dinks creation and the thickness of your cookie sheet), watching them the whole time. 

The end result is two more very cool homemade ornaments for our Christmas tree!

Cinnamon Applesauce Ornaments

Each year, when I pull out the ornaments to decorate the tree, I am surprised that the cinnamon applesauce ornaments we made three years ago still smell wonderful and are still in one piece.  C was three when we made them; R was not even two.  I had never heard of cinnamon applesauce ornaments and I really did not expect them to last very long.  

Since it has been a few years since we last made them, I thought it would be fun to make a few more for our tree and a few to give as teacher gifts.  I have seen a few different recipes, so I'll share the one we have used.

Ingredients:

• cinnamon
• applesauce
• That's it, nothing else!  Use equal parts of each depending on how many ornaments you want to make.  We made fifteen this year and they came from three cups of cinnamon and three cups of applesauce.  You can use as little as half a cup of each ingredient.

Directions:

1. Mix the cinnamon and applesauce together until it feels like dough
2. Roll it out (we keep it thick, at least 1/4 inch - usually thicker)
3. Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes and place the ornaments on a cookie sheet
4. Use a straw to poke a hole in the top of the ornament; you have to do this now while the dough is still wet
5. Allow the ornaments to air dry (this will take at least twelve hours, but if you have thick ornaments like we do, it may take a day or two; our ornaments took two days to dry).  Once they start to get hard, I usually transfer them to a cooling rack so that air can circulate around the ornaments and so that they don't stick to my cookie sheets!
6. Once dry, tie a ribbon through the hole and hang on the tree or anywhere else you want to enjoy the cinnamon fragrance

Little Page Turners recently shared a recipe for cinnamon applesauce ornaments that they baked.  This will certainly shorten the amount of time you have to wait for them to be finished!  I only stuck with my air drying method because it was so successful for us; I'm afraid to change anything!

Shrinky Dink Ornaments

Shrinky Dinks are so much fun. You may remember when C made shrinky dinks backpack bling. We had so much fun in the past with shrinky dinks, so I was very excited when I had the idea to make Christmas ornaments with shrinky dinks paper.

I cut one 8x10 piece of shrinky dinks paper in half and gave C and R each a piece to decorate. Before they began drawing, I asked them which way they were going to draw their pictures so I could punch a hole in the top. They used colored pencils to draw Christmas pictures.

C's picture is on the left and it is an elf surrounded by some of the toys he made for Christmas. I love the little toy Wolverine up on the top shelf.



R's picture is Santa's sleigh filled with presents. She was so excited to do this.

Here they are when they came out of the oven:

We really loved this activity, and I love that C's and R's art can be preserved in the form of Christmas ornaments!