Shrink Plastic Tag

          Here's a short how-to showing how to make a plastic nametag as an accessory for your costume. I wanted an oversized plastic bone-shaped tag for one of my costumes, so I purchased a product called "PolyShrink: Artist's grade shrink plastic" at a local scrapbooking store for $5 for 8 sheets of it. (Their website is http://www.luckysquirrel.com.) Shrink plastic is also known as "Shrinky Dinks." 

Materials

1. Cut out your shape from a whole sheet of shrink plastic, using scissors, razor blade, and/or a hole punch. The "before" size for mine was about 10 inches. 

2. Using sandpaper, evenly sand the surface to prepare it for colored pencils. I used Prismacolor brand colored pencils for my lettering. You can sand and decorate both sides.

3. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Then put the whole shape in there on a plain piece of cardboard for about 5 minutes. You'll have to constantly watch it, since the shrink plastic curls and moves around as it is shrinking, so you may have to take it out of the oven a few times to separate where it gets stuck to itself (otherwise it may stay that way). You can also use a heat gun to shrink the plastic, this may be quicker and less-hassle, but a regular or toaster oven will do fine.

4. You can see in the above photo that it will get wrinkly during the shrinking process. Leave it in the oven until it is mostly flat. Taking it out every minute or so, you can "help" by flattening it with another piece of cardboard to make sure it doesn't cool all curled. 

5. Once the final product cooled, you can optionally spray it with a clear sealant to protect it and make it super-shiny. Attached a clip with a swivel or a split ring to attach it to a collar. The final product the tag I made ended up being 4 inches long and the thickness is about as thick as a 25¢ coin, and has the texture of a shirt button.