Child's Letter to Santa Ornament from Shrinky Dinks
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A friend of mine recently found a letter her daughter had written to Santa several years ago. As we marveled at how cute the letter was, and she wondered how to preserve it, I came up with an idea. What if we made it into an ornament for the tree? I reached for a classic craft supply from my childhood — Shrinky Dinks!
I picked up some white shrink plastic sheets that were inkjet compatible so I could print on them. It was super important that I get white shrink film instead of clear, because I wanted an opaque white finish on the ornament. Then I scanned the letter and printed it right on the sheet, as large as I could.
After trimming the edges and punching the holes along the side, it was ready to shrink. Per package directions, I placed the plastic on a piece of cardboard and covered it with a sheet of parchment paper to help hold it flat.
It only took a couple of minutes to shrink, and it curled up like crazy during the process! The parchment paper really helped to tame it, and in the end I was left with a thick plastic letter that was adorably smaller than the original.
All that was left to do was add a ribbon hanger, and it was done.
Oh my goodness, look how cute it is hanging on the tree!
Not only is this a great way to preserve old letters your children wrote to Santa, but you can even use this technique for new letters — just have the child write the letter directly on the shrink plastic, and hang the letter on the tree for Santa to see!
4 comments so far:
Hey There - Can you please send me the link to what Shrinking Film you used? Thank you!!
Jaime Jo, you can find lots of shrink plastic options here on Amazon
What makers did you use to write the letter out?
Stephanie, we did not use markers for this. Instead, we scanned a letter the child had written with paper and pencil, and then printed that scanned image directly onto the shrink film.