thanks anistara!
..I think this thinner paper (that can go in printer) is more curly than the regular ones and its much worse...But I will try keeping them in a little longer. I may also try just being patient and doing them with a heat gun - one at a time...

:-)

ooow, thats true, thanks!
I will try re-heating one that I thought was ruined and see what I can do!

Thanks J9:-)
I will try that parchment paper!!

Your party sounds FUUUN!

I'm shrinking your head...

you guys are the coolest...
EVER!

I had a friend in High School that did that, and she poked a hole through one corner of the finished bag and made it into a keychain... I used to think it was the coolest thing...

do you know time and temp for baking the bags?

This is the specific craft that I am trying to do! I saw a collage of miniature junk food like Twisters, Life Savers and Lay's wrappers at someone's house. They get really small. I normal bag of Doritos was about 1-1/2" x 3". The owner told me that they had been baked in the oven to shrink.

I tried with an Oreo outer wrapper and did not have good results. I started at 300 degrees and got excited when it curled, got smaller. . .but then it stopped. I waited and nothing else happened. I turned the heat up to 350 and it started to lay a little flatter, shrunk a little more, then stopped. I turned the heat up again: 400. I was doing this in a toaster oven and got nervous that the plastic was too close to the heating element and I was going to start a fire! When I could really smell the plastic, I took it out. I was surprised that the plastic wasn't hot. I am guessing that it could have taken more heat.

I am thinking that this should really be done in a full-size oven. Please ask your husband for better instructions, or if anyone out there knows how to do this, please let me know! Thank you!

We did a similar thing in my seventh grade science class.

We drew using watercolor markers on recycleable plastic...It might have been 6, but I though it was 2. When blown over with a heatgun, they shrink.
I had no idea there was actually a PRODUCT for it. Now there's some good marketing!

I am appalled to say, I have never done shrinky-dinks...Yes, it's true, I was deprived of this fundamental childhood experience.

I'm OK...I'm just going to get some real soon, that's for sure.

And about "poor man's shrinky dinks" - I read somewhere (thought it was here, could be wrong...) that you can use plastic that is labelled 6 in the little arrow-recycling-triangle-thingy. I have a few ready-made pie covers that say 6, and I noticed a blue mushroom tray I emptied the other day said 6 as well - there are no flat sections big enough to work with, but maybe I'll experiment with bumpy pieces. Not a lot of recyclables say 6, though, so I don't have much to try out right now, so I'm savin em up!

I know it, you crafty vixens will be checking your recycling, won't you? Squinting at that teeny lil mark on the bottoms...Good girls!

Oh, and I found these drawer organizers from rubbermaid, or the dollar store - they have edges so you can join the various sizes and shapes together to fit your drawers, y'know...well, they said 6 on them, too...go figure!

I'll try to find the original instructions for this, so I can give it to you from the mouth (or site) of someone who's actually done it. But right now, it's 3 am, so I should go to sleep.