Shrink Film Craft Fail!

Remember how much fun shrinky dinks were?!  I found some of the plain shrink film at the craft store and all kinds of ideas started swirling around - jewelry, buttons, zipper pulls, maybe even little custom people that look like my family to jazz up Candy Land.  But the first attempt didn't go so well. 

The Little Man of the House gets so excited when he sees his name, so for the first experiment with shrink film, I wrote his name in black marker.  The film is pretty glossy, so it needed to dry a bit to keep from smearing the ink.

Then I cut around the name and added a little hole so that we can eventually attach it to a keychain or zipper or something else that the Little Man will be pround of.

Next, things got a little messy.  BEWARE of the smudgies - Even though the marker had set a bit on the film, it still smears when adding in  allowing a 4-year-old to add in other colors.  It may not suit my grown-up taste, but it was totally kid-tastic by preschool standards.
 

Next step - get that baby into the oven for 2-3 minutes.  The directions are sparse, but do say that the film will curl before flattening, and do not remove it from the heat before it uncurls.  ....so 5 minutes later it is still in the oven and yet not uncurled because it managed to meld itself together.  I managed to break it while trying to uncurl it:

Even in the hard curled plastic mess, I see some promise.  The colors really did pop out in a fun and cartoony way after baking, and it looks like the finished product will be sturdy.  So attempt number two is to follow, wish us luck!