Hello Custom Acrylic Word Necklace with Shrinky Dinks!

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6:00 AM

Custom Acrylic Necklaces are all the rage...

but unless you have a 3D printer, laser cutter or want to

spend more than $30...{which I don't}

they are a little out of reach...until NOW!

Say Hello to the DIY version--for CHEAP!
(These were made with stuff I had on hand...love hoarding!)
If you have to buy the supplies, they'll cost about $2-3 each.
(and that's mostly the chain...so round up some old necklace chains...
or use twine, yarn, string...whatever!)

Here's what you'll need:

Shrinky dinks or Shrink plastic #6.

(A lot of plastic take out boxes are number six...

just look for the symbol on the bottom and they will work for this project!)

Sharpies, Markers or colored pencils

scissors, x-acto knife

Jump rings, jewelry chain, pliers...

and the word you want to immortalize.

We chose Hello:

You can save this off and use it...or do your own word/name.

We printed out the hello at 300% of what we
wanted the finished project to measure.
It shrinks almost 200%...keep that in mind.
So, the hello measured about 6 inches wide...
they finished at 2 1/4" wide.

Trace your word onto the shrink plastic on the rough side...
for the yellow hello, we traced it the same direction...
we reversed the word for the blue one.
This is all based on preference, they both look awesome!

On the blue one, we made little bumps on
the sides for hole punching too...
totally base yours off of preference and if your word has enough loops...

See the difference?
If I was doing this with some tweens,
I'd go with the easy route and do it the right direction.

Punch holes, if you need to.
Make sure they are bigger than just one hole punch, they shrink quite a bit!

Now color them!
Using markers or colored pencils.
Sharpies work GREAT too...you could do a silver or gold one...or neon!
I used copic markers and blended colors to look ombre.

This one in blues...

This one in yellows!
Remember to color on the rough side of the plastic.
If you are using recycled goods...maybe rough it
up slightly with some sand paper first.

Once they are colored, place them rough/colored side up
on a baking sheet.
Oven should be at 350*

Here's the uber fun and uber scary part!
It's so fun to watch the plastic melt...but scary...
I always worry that it wont work!
It will melt, and begin to curl up...then it will flatten back out.
After it flattened out, the words were stretched out a little weird...
so I used a tiny spatula and straightened out the letters again
(last picture of the sequence)
Watch it though, it only takes 2-3 minutes for the entire process.

Then remove from oven and let them cool, about 3 minutes.
Here's the good old size comparison to how big we started with them.

Now they are thick hard plastic! Just like those acrylic ones! yay!
Now to turn them into eye catching necklaces:
You'll need your chain, clasps (for a choker), and jump rings...
as well as your pliers.

My short necklace is 16 inches long.
I hooked the jump ring on one 7.5" chain, and the lobster clasp on the other.

Then used the other end to hook onto my hello with jump rings!
Easy!

For the yellow one, I got chain long enough to go around my
head and just used jump rings to hook into the h and the o!
Easier!
You can make a necklace display like this one too!

Do you ever write or say the same word over and over...
then it sounds and looks weird and you feel like you
spelled it wrong?...I'm feeling that with this hello.

These would be so darling as little stocking stuffers,
gifts for friends, grandkids...birthday party crafts for tweens and teens!
You could do LOL, YOLO or some inside joke phrase word!