Tutorial: Pyrex Novelty Brooches

Yesterday, I sat with my mom at the kitchen table and colored all day. It was like being five years old again. We were coloring Shrinky Dinks and I made some fabulous Pyrex brooches! These are so easy to make and truly require no artistic skills at all. If you can trace and color in the lines, you can make these. It's like having your entire dream Pyrex collection without spending a  fortune or needing the space to keep it all. Lets get started:

I used frosted rough and ready Shrinky Dinks for this project.



Find your dream collection 
Do a Google image search for something like "vintage Pyrex" and collect images of your dream pieces. You can do stacks of Cinderella bowls, colorful fridge sets, single casseroles- whatever you like! Save the images to your computer

Since Shrinky Dinks shrink to about 1/3 the original size, make sure to find large enough images. These are about 4 by 3 inches


Coloring Time
Print the images and lay a sheet of Shrinky Dink film on top, tape in place.  Trace them with colored pencils. I used my mommas Prismacolor pencils. For the outline, I used greys, browns, navy or greens. You can certainly use black but I wanted to try different colors so the line wouldn't look too harsh


 
 

On this fridge set, I included the highlights and shadows as shown in the photograph.



I also printed out the word "Pyrex" in cute retro font to make dangly bits to be attached with jump rings. I think my letters turned out a bit too big so I'll have to re-do.



cut out, punch holes and bake according to the instructions. Remember to use a large enough hole punch because your holes will shrink too.

We had so much fun watching these shrink. Mom, Olivia and I all gathered on the kitchen floor in front of the oven and watched as they curled up and flattened back out. Once they were all flattened, we counted down to 30 seconds and pulled them out to cool. The instructions call for you to put something on top of them as they cool for 15 seconds so we used a paper back cookbook that we had handy in the kitchen.



attach jump rings and a pin back. My pin backs have a trip of adhesive so you just peel and stick and it's done! You can also glue the pin backs on with some jewelry glue such as E6000





Shrinky Dinks can be colored with pens, stamps, colored pencils and some may even be used on an ink jet printer!

For more adorable novelty brooch projects, check out my e-book, Pins for Pin-Ups: DIY Brooches for Retro Girls