Shrinky-Knives

I may or may not have just crawled out of bed. I'd apologize for my laziness this morning, but I'm not really too sorry, lol. Everyone needs these days every now and then. We spent the day yesterday with my sister, Cameron's brother, and their kid (a set of sisters married a set of brothers...our family tree is interesting) down in Tucson, AZ and had a marvelous time. Why we chose July to go to Tucson, I have no idea. But despite the 113 degree weather, we had a blast. If you ever have the chance to go to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, take it! It's fantastic. Even for those of us desert rats who reside in the desert already, it's fantastic. Just one thing about it though...if you go during the summer hit it early in the morning or go for their evening hours. It was still totally worth it mid-summer-day though. Had we been smart, we would have done what my friend in the Phoenix valley did the other day and left at tray of cookie dough on the dash of the car and had hot, fresh baked cookies to eat when we got done (no joke, she did that and it worked). Or maybe we should have tried today's Pinstrosity in the car...it definitely got plenty hot in the car while we were at the museum. 

The Original Pin:

http://shellesplayschool.wordpress.com/2012/07/

Using the shinky-dink idea, Shelle decided to try using plastic cutlery to make art and ended up figuring out how to make plastic personalize bracelets from plastic knives. If you click on the link captioned in the above photo you can see more of her creations. 

Katrina one day was trying to figure out what to do with all the plastic knives she had kicking around, so she got on Pinterest and finally hit on Shelle's idea above. Seemed perfect! She said, "So my 12yr old daughter and I started markering up all these plastic knives...we took almost 2 hours.....and imagining who we would give them too, if we could sell them at a craft fair....and just thinking how much attention we were going to get for being SO STINKING CREATIVE!!!! We planned some colors on the knives, that would match some outfits we would have!!!!!! LOL "

The Pinstrosity

Rather than curling, their knives mostly just shrunk!  Katrina's daughter worked to salvage the situation by saving some of the now mini-knives to use as cheese or butter spreaders, but there were definitely no bracelets. 

It's hard to say just why there was no curling. First, the website does specify that you need #6 Polystyrene Plastic cutlery for this to work. Not just any plastic will do. Second, you need to make sure that your oven is fully preheated before you stick the knives in so they get a shock of heat immediately when you put them in. 

Since the knives didn't curl up on their own in the oven, one thing the original site suggests is to put on oven mitts and use metal tongs to carefully bend the knives as they are taken out of the oven one by one. Shelle's directions on this matter say, "When the bracelets look to be about the right size for the person who will be wearing them, the grown-up should take them out of the oven quickly using oven mitts.  Then, while they are still hot, the adult can shape the bracelets using the metal tongs.  The bracelets will probably be about the right shape already, but you will want to make sure the opening is big enough to slip a wrist through.  Also, if the edges did not curl in the oven, now is the time to curl them using the tongs." But, having played with melty plastic before, it is still easy to break the knives even as you pull them out of the oven, so be careful. Or on the other side, if the knife is really really melty, then you end up with melted plastic stuck to the tongs and the mitts (but you'd have to leave them in the oven for quite a while for that to happen).

So if you're in need of a some fun and cheap jewelry for you and your kids to sport at the 4th of July parades on Thursday, this may be a really fun craft to try out! Check out Shelle's patriotic bracelets made out of a spoon, a fork, and a knife:

http://shellesplayschool.wordpress.com/2012/07/

Give it a try and let us know how it goes!