It's been far too long since I made some jewellery and so when I came across some shrink plastic that I've never actually used, I thought I'd give it a go. I'm always admiring the geometric jewellery in Oliver Bonas and so decided to make a more simplistic and minimal version of my own. This necklace was ridiculously easy and I was so shocked at how fast the whole project was to complete. I had so much fun making this and for my first time using shrink plastic think it came out pretty well. Expect to see more shrink plastic projects on here in the future! Keep reading to find out what I used and how I made it...
1. First things first, preheat your oven to the temperature specified on your plastic. I misplaced the packaging for my shrink plastic so ended up using approximately 200C.
2. Draw out two triangles on a piece of paper. For triangle 1, you want to have a long edge of 8cm and two shorter sides of 6.5cm. For triangle 2, you want one side to be 4cm and two sides 4.5cm.
3. Place your shrink plastic over each triangle and trace them. For this, I used a ruler to keep my lines straight and a permanent bronze sharpie.
4. Colour in the larger triangle using a bronze sharpie. I coloured in one direction for a first layer, let it dry and then coloured in a different direction for the second.
5. Cut out both triangles and add holes to the larger triangle. I used scissors but if you want to be even more precise you could use a scalpel and metal ruler. To add holes, I used a standard hole punch.
6. Pop your triangles into the oven. I did one piece at a time as these things can roll up and
move about a bit so you don't want them to get stuck together. Once you put them in, watch and wait until they are completely flat before removing.
7. Remove them from the oven using oven gloves or tongs. I found mine weren't always perfectly flat so whilst they were still warm I flattened them with the bottom of a glass.
10. When cool, paint the smaller triangle and leave to dry before glueing to the larger triangle. To paint the smaller triangle I used a couple of coats of acrylic paint and glued it to the larger triangle using hot glue.
11. Cut 2 x 22.5cm of chain and attach each of these to the larger triangle. Using pliers cut the chain to length and attach using two jump rings. Open up the jump ring, add the triangle and before closing add in the chain.
12. At the end of one end of triangle attach a jump ring, and at the end of the other a trigger clasp. To attach the trigger clasp, open the jump ring and loop the chain onto it and the trigger clasp before closing.
I'd be really interested to hear what you think of this project and of shrink plastic in general so let me know in the comments below! Also, let me know if you'd appreciate some basic jewellery making tutorials in the future (like opening and closing jump rings, etc)!
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