So here is how to
make the silhouette bracelet.
Run to your nearest
craft store. I chose Hobby Lobby. Grab yourself some printable shrinky dink
paper. Yes, you heard that right! Shrinky dink paper. It’s important to make
sure you get the kind for your ink jet printer though. And don’t forget your
40% off coupon if you’re going to Hobby Lobby! J
You’ll also want to
grab a bracelet from the jewelry isle. I think this one was 1.99. I went with
CHEAP! You’ll also need to get some jump rings. Make sure you get open ones
though otherwise you will have to be “cool” like me and have to get a wire
cutter to make them open. Yes I bought closed jump rings! LAME! And if you want
the little pearl separators you’ll need to get some little pin things to put
your beads on. Sorry I don’t know what they are called. They have a flat head
at the bottom to hold the bead in place. And if you don’t have an 1/8 inch hole
punch you’ll need to grab one of those as well. I didn’t have the 1/8 inch
punch so I had to go back to Hobby Lobby for a second time to grab one of
those.
So now that you have
all your stuff the fun begins. Take your iPhone, or heaven forbid your android
or other cellular device, and take several side shots of your kiddos. This is
what mine looked like.
After you get your
side pictures taken you need to upload them to some sort of photo editing
program. I have photoshop but ended up using this free program
Once you upload your
picture you need to go to the decorate tab. This next part I felt was the
hardest. You’ll have to zoom in close and trace around your image. First you
will need to outline your picture in white and then fill in the background with
white. Then you have to trace the inside of your image with black and fill in
the inside of your child’s picture with black. Seriously, this was the hardest
part. I kept having to undo my work cause my hand would slip, but a little
patience got me through. Once you finish outlining and filling your picture you
can save it to your computer. Oh! And I forgot to mention this program is
FREE!!! Gotta love FREE!
So once you finish
your silhouette images you need to figure out how big you want them. I went
through a couple batches to figure out I wanted them to be pretty small so they
looked more like little charms on a charm bracelet. I liked the idea of having their names and
birthdates as a charm as well. After much trial and error, I decided I liked
the size of the birthdate charms I made so I just made the silhouettes a tad
bigger.
I uploaded my images
to Word and sized them there.
The circles for the
names were 1.5 X 1.5. I did a very light gray outline around the circles to
make cutting easier.
The silhouettes were
1.2 X 1.5.
I also had to make a
little template to trace around the silhouettes once they were printed out. The
template was a circle/oval that was 1.5 x 1.65.
So after I did all
the stuff in Word, I printed them out cut out the name circles. Then I traced
the template circle very lightly around the silhouettes and then cut those out
as well.
Now this next step is
SUPER important! Remember that 1/8 inch punch that you needed. Get that out
NOW! I may have forgotten this step once and before you knew it, it was to
late! You have to do this before they bake. Punch a hole right in between the
top of the dink and where the top of your silhouette head is. You need to make
sure that it is not to close to the edge of the dink and not to close to the
silhouette otherwise you won’t be able to get your jump ring on.
Now here is where
there was a learning curve. Shrinky dinks can be very unpredictable. I found
the easiest way to get around mess-ups was to preheat the oven to 275. Get 2
pizza pans. Cut a brown grocery sack to lie down on your sheet. Make sure that
if there is any ink on the bag that that ink does not come in contact with your
shrinky dinks.
Place your shrinky
dinks about an inch apart on your brown paper bag lined pizza sheet. Then place
a second sheet of brown bag over the top of your dinks. Then place the second
pizza pan on top of all of that. Once your oven has heated up, put your dinks
in the oven for 20 mins. That’s right! Just stick them in there and walk away.
It will all be O.K.!
Once the 20 mins is
up, take them out of the oven and CAREFULLY take the top pan off and CAREFULLY
slide the brown bag sandwich on to your countertop and set a couple of heavy
books on top for about 5 mins.
Once they have cooled
a bit you can take your brown bag sandwich apart and you should, fingers
crossed, have super cute little charms just waiting to be put on a bracelet.
The rest is pretty
easy. You lay them out next to your bracelet and figure out your spacing.
Attach a jump ring to your charm and then add it to your bracelet.
If you want the
little pearl things you just and a couple beads to your “needle” things (sorry
I don’t know the technical term) that you picked up earlier. Get some wire
cutters and cut off the extra wire leaving about ½ inch to wrap around a ring
on your bracelet. I needed needle nose
pliers to do this.
As for the little
heart that’s on mine, I just took some permanent marker to the uncooked dink
paper and cooked it with the rest of my charms.
Hopefully this all
makes sense and feel free to ask if you have any questions!
