Grafix Shrink Film – Red Opaque 8.5″x11″ Sheets, Design Your Art and Shrink It to Create Jewelry, Embellishments, Paper Crafts, Gift Tags, Ornaments and More, Pack of 50

Fabulous for art projects with the kids
I priced the Shrinky-Dink brand shrink film and realized it would be too expensive for my large group of kids so I started looking for alternatives. This film by Grafix is perfect and priced very well.This particular film is clear so the resulting shrinky designs look a lot like stained glass. Grafix also offers white film and even film that can be run through your ink jet printer!If you’ve never used shrinkable film, here’s a little tutorial. You’ll need shrinkable film, permanent markers or colored pencils, scissors, some parchment paper and something to bake in. I use a cheap toaster oven that I reserve for this and for baking Sculpy clay. Optional supplies are some fine grit sandpaper for lightly sanding the film when using colored pencils, a hole punch, some jump rings and needle nose pliers, key rings and some adhesive-backed magnets.I cut each sheet of film into quarters because a quarter sheet is a good size for shrinking. Larger sheets sometimes shrink strangely and curl in odd ways. Have the child draw a design onto the quarter sheet film, trying to fill the film as much as possible because it will shrink by 50%. If their design is too small, it will be miniscule after baking!If you wish to turn your shrinky designs into charms, keychains or necklaces, you’ll need to punch a hole with a hole punch somewhere in the design before baking. If you want to make refrigerator magnets, no hole is necessary. Then cut around the design as desired.Turn your oven on to 350 degrees and let it heat up. A toaster oven works brilliantly for this because it heats very quickly and has a glass door for watching the magic happen. Place the design on a piece of parchment paper and lay on a metal baking tray and place in the oven. Watch closely because the baking process is short! You will notice that the design begins to shrink and curl up. Don’t worry. As the shrinking completes, the design will uncurl and become flat again.When it has pretty much flattened out, remove it from the oven. I use tongs and gloves for this because the plastic is very, very hot. Place it on a heat proof surface and slam a heavy book on top of it to make it completely flat. (Kids LOVE this part.) Ta da! You’ve made a shrinky dink!Sometimes with larger designs or ones with a lot of long thin sections, it will curl a lot and perhaps stick to itself. I have a chopstick I keep next to the toaster oven for intervening when this happens.You will see that the film ends up being much thicker after shrinking so it is no longer flexible. You can seal your design with clear nail polish or a spray sealant, if desired. Magic marker designs can chip a little if not sealed.Colored pencils seem to make the most durable designs, but you need to lightly sand your film before drawing the design. Sanding creates a tooth for the colored pencil lead to catch on. Sand lightly in both directions in a hatch-type fashion.Hint: Buy some metallic Sharpie markers even if you plan to use colored pencils. They add sparkle to every design and the kids seem to adore using them. They come in gold, silver and bronze.Any kid old enough to draw will love making shrinky designs. Kids 11 or 12 or older can even do the baking themselves with supervision. If you’re looking for a fun art project to do with kids, I promise you they will be thrilled with this one.

Kinda pricey but well worth it!!
New to shrink plastic crafts,this is the second brand I tried, super happy with these though! Expensive for a craft supply but well worth the price. The printable shrinky dink brand sheets do NOT take my HP printer ink well and keep smudging even though I let it dry for an hour before touching. This one dried within minutes after printing,no smudging before or after baking, very nice!I read reviews about this particular brand of paper and decided to reduce color saturation by only 30% for printing, that worked perfectly for me. They turned back to the original color after baking, I am super excited!!I baked these at 350° for 3 mins sandwiched between two cardstock papers on a cookie sheet. They come out flat without needing to be pressed flat with a spatula. But they don’t shrink as much as the shrinky dink brand. I scale them up to 200% so they can shrink down to the size I want. I tried scaling to 300% like I did for the shrinky dink brand and they were still huge after 3 1/2 mins in the oven! So scale to 200%, bake at 350° for 3 mins is perfect for this brand.Now when I said NO smudging before or after baking, that is 100% true. BUT when adding Dimensional Magic to make these dome, these DID bleed, especially the black ink. So make sure to seal, SEAL and SEAL, before adding the dimensional magic. Let it dry after each coat of sealant. I blow dried in between because I lack the patience. Then after the final coat of acrylic sealer, I let it dry overnight. Check that it is completely dry before adding the dimensional magic.Have no success cutting it with my silhouette cameo 3 but that’s okay, maybe when I upgrade to cameo 4 I will have better luck. Love these, I just wish they were cheaper.

Buen material, yo lo he utilizado pare realizar pins y pendientes y el resultado es muy bueno aunque dependiendo del tamaño del que lo hagas y del resultado que quieras tienes que ir experimentando un poco y calculando tus propios tiempos.Algo que no he leído mucho sobre este producto y que creo que la gente debería saber es que para que tus creaciones se queden totalmente planas, nada más sacarlas del horno, corriendo tienes que aplanarlas con una espátula.

I decided to scrap one sheet for testing a few things.First of all, I have an HP inkjet printer and I had zero issues printing my designs. The result is a very sharp and smooth print that is also very easy to cut with regular scissors.Second thing, I tried using both a toaster oven and a heat gun to shrink my product (the end goal was a rather detail intense set of pins). I needed the design to shrink as flat as possible with almost no distortion. I knew, from experience with a similar product, that the heat gun could get messy and gosh it did xD I can see it being useful for making petals or other more ‘organic’ forms but controlling the shrinkage with a heat gun requires control and you often end up with the design folding on itself thus making it impossible to flatten it afterwards.On to the toaster oven! With a parchment sheet folded over the design to keep it down a bit, merely 30 sec in the oven (and not the 2 min mentioned on the package) and once removed, I quickly rolled a water bottle over each shrunk design to flatten them before they got cold. Success rate of nearly 100% The few I missed I could reheat and redo the flattening process.Third point, the shrinkage % The package mentions BOTH 20% and 50% so I went to their website… which mention both % as well in different pdf, which is stupid. Get your facts right people. I can assure you the shrinkage is 50% and NOT 20%And final point, colors. Keep in mind that, as the design shrinks, you get more ink in a smaller surface so everything will get significantly darker. If you use a design drawn from an art program, I suggest making it at least 20% paler than what you want as an end result. (The lazy yet efficient way it just set it to 80% transparency on a white background). It worked like a charm for me.Hope that lengthy review will help some people. Have fun!