Shrinky Dink DIY - Game of Thrones Sigil Badges

The other day I promised you a Game Of Thrones themed shrinky dink tutorial. Well I hope you won't be disappointed because I have put every effort into making these as accurate as possible, using my GOT nerd knowledge.

Essentially what we are making is little badges, so if you aren't a GOT fan you can always adapt the idea to make something else.  I will share a few things I learned about shrinky dinks along the way.

So, without further ado, I present to you DIY GOT House sigil badges, featuring Lannister, Baratheon and Stark!

What you will need;
Shrinky Dink Paper (printable)
An Oven
A Brooch Back
Paint (can be spray paint, nail varnish or something else)
Glue

First of all decide what you want on your brooch and find images online. For these I simply found a shield outline, and the 3 animals on the Game of Thrones Sigils. Remember, we can paint these afterwards so it is really just the outline that is imporant. You will see that I reversed the Stark Direwolf below, that was because I did think I might just leave it white, so I didn't want any of the print on the side it was supposed to face.

If you had really good images I suppose you could just print them directly onto the shield design. But I decided to print them all separately, so they would have a 3D effect.

Copy and paste the images into a word document or another computer program, and print out onto your shrinky dink plastic. Then you will need to be patient and cut out each shape. Make sure you get in all the detail, it may take a little while but it is well worth it! Once I had done this I placed all my animals on top of the shields to get an idea of scale. I decided that the wolf and the lion were too big, so you will notice that later on I switched to smaller versions.

To get an idea of the size they are likely to come out, my shields measured 4.8cm by 6cm at their widest points when I printed them. Once they had been in the oven they measured about 2.8cm by 3cm. So make sure you make your images big enough. Here's the size before and after;

Now follow the instructions on your shrinky dink packet.  Mine told me to make sure all the pieces were separate and put them on some baking paper. They took between 3 - 5 minutes to cook, and you could tell when they were done because they would curl up, and then flatten out. When they were flat again they were done. It was actually really interesting to watch!

Once all of your pieces are cooked you can think about what colours you want to paint them. I used spray paint on the wolf, lion and yellow shield, and nail varnish on the red and white shield. I think I preferred the evenness of the spray paint, but use whatever you have to hand!

When these are completely dry, glue both pieces of plastic together, then glue the brooch back on too.

 And you're finished! You can wear you sigil brooch with pride! But which house will you choose?

House Baratheon

House Stark

House Lannister

I can't decide! Which house would you pick?

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial, even if you aren't a Game of Thrones fan. The possibilities really are endless with Shrinky Dink plastic. Although I do wish it was called something slightly less silly!  

You can take a peek at what else I have been making in this post. 

Laura xXx