Shrinky dink puppy dog necklaces

Hello! I'm a bit unsure of showing you this project as they are gifts for some friends who may or may not be reading this ... well, if you receive one of these in the near future, just pretend to be surprised, ok? ~___^ I know cats are all the rage these days, and while I do have a soft spot for the neighbour's kitty who sometimes visits me, I must admit that I am a dog person at heart. So when I found a whole heap of puppy vectors, I knew I had to make something! I decided on necklaces because I really don't wear them a whole lot, but I am seriously tempted to make mine into a brooch. Which would kinda defeat the whole purpose of making necklaces ... Hmmmm, anyway.

To make your own puppy necklace, you'll need;
- shrinky dinks
- scissors and a scalpel
- a pencil
- silhouettes of puppies (I scaled mine to be the width of an A4 piece of paper and could fit two dogs on each sheet)
- an oven
- E6000 glue 
- jewellery findings, chain, and pliers

The first thing I did was print out my silhouettes and use my pencil to trace the shapes onto the shrinky dink sheet. I used white shrinky dinks, but they are not totally opaque so it's really simple to trace out the outlines of the dogs.

Then I started cutting out the general shape using my scissors. Keep in mind that shrink dinks can split pretty easily; I find that for corners, cutting from either direction into the corner is much neater than trying to cut in one direction all the way around.

 

I used my scalpel to cut out little details on the dogs, like the ears and a curly tail that would otherwise just look like a strange growth.

 

Once they are all cut out, erase any left over pencil marks and then pop them in the oven. I put my shrinky dinks onto a sheet of baking paper and baked them at the lowest setting.

 

And this is how they came out; it appears they've contracted boneitis. Oh dear! So, I repeated all the steps above, except this time I baked them on a tray, on a sheet of baking paper, with another sheet of baking paper on top, and another tray on top of that. Those puppies weren't going anywhere!

And they turned out perfectly, hurray! ^___^ Except that I was distracted while cutting out the second Husky puppy and forgot to use my scalpel to include his tail details. Opps. I think I'll need to keep him for myself and make another for my friend. I'll still love you, Husky-with-strange-growth-on-your-back! To give you an idea of size, the Husky is about 8cm wide and 7.5cm tall.

I also made a Beagle who is just a little shorter at 7cm tall ...

 

 ... and a Dachshund, who is longer (8.5cm) but also shorter at 4cm tall ...

... and a Labrador who is the longest at 9cm, and is also 7cm tall ^___^  I glued bails onto the backs of the dogs with the E6000 and then it was a simple matter of threading through some chain and adding the clasp.

 

I really like how crisp the plain white shrinky dinks look, but I think these would also look great as metallics. Golden retriever, anyone? ~___^

- Lisa xx