Shrinkies Plastic Feather Keyring

A few weeks ago I posted a pleather feather keyring DIY and after experimenting with Shrinkies in a 90s craft blast from the past, I decided to fuse the two together and see how it worked out [clue: it sort of did but by accident].

What I Used:
Shrinkies Clear Plastic
Sharpies
HolePunch / Scissors
Needle / Thread
Keyring

 I used a feather template originally created for this post to draw my feathers, but you can create 

your own free-hand or with a printed image, or be a Shrinkies ninja and draw straight on to the

 plastic with no help.

Once your outlines have been drawn, you can turn the plastic over and get on with the detail.

This was where I wished I had the white plastic for this project, as the gold-toned Sharpies I have don’t transfer particularly well on to the clear plastic, so my colours were limited to brown, with a little detail added with colour blocks.  Don’t forget that the plastic will shrink up to 7 times smaller, so although it may not seem particularly detailed, it will all shrink together nicely:

Remembering my cutting problems from my previous experiment, I was generous with the 

outline and tried to keep the lines as smooth as possible:

I also created attachments for the feathers, using a hole-punch at the ends so that they could be

 easily threaded afterwards………….

….before transferring the feathers to a lined baking tray and popping in the oven at 170 degrees:

I completely missed the process during my experiment, so set up camp on the floor by the oven, British Bake Off-style, and watched the feathers twist, turn and curl [as expected]……..

……and then not uncurl.  

Definitely not supposed to happen:

I took them out as quickly as I could and tried to flatten the plastic out – which worked a little, 

but there were still obvious kinks.  There was also a little ink transfer at either end:

I put them back in the oven to see if it would help flatten the plastic further, but it tended to 

continue to curl, so I admitted defeat and turned the oven off.  I tried placing a sheet of foil on top, 

with a heavy dish to prevent further curling and left the plastic to cool.  

Flattening with a dish worked much better than I though and unintentionally, the curves gave the feathers some detail and the ink transfer was not as noticeable as I originally thought:

To transform this all in to a keyring, I used embroidery thread to attach the feathers [for now], but I think I might replace this with cord, or plait the floss to add a bit more detail:

I varied the length of the thread for each feather:

...and attached them with a finding:

Ready for my keys:

P.S – if you have any idea why the feathers didn’t uncurl, please let me know!

P.P.S - make a whole bunch of these in brighter Sharpies and how excellent would they

 look for this DIY?!

Have a fab weekend - see you next time x