Artist Palette Necklace Tutorial

I have a confession.  I'm dreaming of writing a craft book.  As much as I enjoy making finished products, I'm happiest when sitting at my craft table, dreaming up new projects.  It must be the scientist in me but I just love experimenting.  So I'm thinking of writing a book.  Which means I am putting lots of extra time into craft experiments and tutorials.  You may have noticed an increase of tutorials on the blog.  If you ever have feedback on them, I would love to hear it.  With that in mind, here is another one of my crafty experiments.  Enjoy.

As you may know, I love playing with shrinky dink.  I had so much fun dreaming up the woven shrinky dink bracelet.  This time, I took it to the next level and incorporated another childhood favorite, Perler beads.  To start, draw out the shape of an artist's palette on white shrinky dink.  You can freehand it if you feel confident, otherwise just print and trace.

Cut it out and then cut out the thumb hole.  I used a hole punch and then scissors to enlarge the whole a bit.  I also punched a whole to hang it from but later realized this was irrelevant; it melted away.

Bake your shrinky dink at 325 degrees F to shrink it.  Now take it out of the oven and crank the temperature up to 375 degrees F.  Arrange your Perler beads around the palette; these will be your paint blobs.

Okay.  Now put it all back in the oven and be careful not to knock the Perler beads over.  It took about 20min for my beads to melt into blobs.  During this time, you will notice that your shrinky dink starts to melt around the edges.  That's fine.  Shrinky dink can be cooked at a temperature of 450 degrees F to fuse the pieces together and that typically involves a little melting.  [Note- I baked mine on parchment paper, but you may want to use a glass baking dish.  According to the directions, shrinky dink needs to be fused on a glass dish.  I noticed that my parchment paper baked into a nice tan color at 375 so I probably will try glass next time.]

Once melted, remove from oven and let cool.  See what I mean about the small hole I punched melting away?  That's fine though because you can use your thumb hole to attach a chain with a jump ring.

That's it!  All done.  Now put on your necklace and take some awkward modeling shots of yourself where your head is cut off.  Perfect.