Use This Childhood Craft to Make Custom Flair Pins
We’ve recently started to think more about the crafts we were obsessed with as kids and have decided to revisit them for some adult DIY craft time. Remember Shrinky Dinks? Well, they are the perfect solution for making your own custom flair pins. If you were deprived of Shrinky Dinks as a kid, it’s time for you to get accustomed to this magical paper! It shrinks your design by about 50% and turns it into a hard, enamel-like piece. The throwback craft is pretty great for creating magnets or charms, and we’ve even used it to make a cake topper (check it out in our wedding dessert table tutorial). You’ll never believe it ;) but we’ve supplied you with an amazing printable of some of our favorite things here at B+C.
Materials + Tools:
— B+C flaire printable
— Shrinky Dink printable paper
— push pins
— super glue
— scissors
Instructions:
1. Print out or draw your flaire designs onto the Shrinky Dink paper. Color in the designs with permanent markers, and then cut the shapes out using scissors.
2. Watch your masterpiece shrink to half the size in a 350-degree (Fahrenheit) oven. This should take about four minutes.
3. Superglue push pins onto the back of the flair and pair with a pin back.
We trolled around B+C HQ and asked everyone what some of there favorite things are. We got a lot of answers like ice cream, flowers and, of course, pineapples :) Download a free printable of our favorite things and print it onto (printable) Shrinky Dink paper. Cut out your designs closely to the edge of the design using scissors.
Guess what! You can also download our outlines and color them in yourself. Use permanent markers to fill in your designs. In our opinion, the pins we colored in with Sharpies turned out a lot brighter than the ones that were printed out.
If you aren’t into cheeky pins, try pins of your Instagram feed!
Lastly, hand draw your own designs using permanent markers on normal Shrinky Dink paper. Remember — draw big images, because they will shrink.
Place your pieces on a cookie sheet in a 350-degree oven. Within four minutes your designs will shrink down to half the size. This part always makes me nervous — the designs will curl up on themselves and then reopen back up. Sometimes they do get stuck, so watch and carefully flatten them out while they’re still warm. Once they have shrunk, put another cookie sheet on top to help with the flattening process. Super glue push pins to the back of the Shrinky Dink once it has cooled down.
Check out this custom flair! I can’t figure out which is my favorite. The hula dancer, the chip-which, the pineapple or the hot glue gun?!?
Smack these babies onto a jean jacket and embrace the new woman you’ve become. Once you flair, you can never go back. (I mean why would you want to?)
In our opinion, you can never have too much flair.
Don’t forget about the backpack!
