HOW TO MAKE A MOCKING JAY PIN - RE-POST

Keeping with Shrinky Dinks (from my last post of making Lalaloopsy necklaces) I thought I’d re-post my Mocking Jay pin. The new Hunger Games movie is coming out this November so let the hype begin.

Original post here March 21, 2012:

So if you haven’t read The Hunger Games yet – do it, it’s awesome. I’m very excited about the movie coming out on Friday and so is my sister-in-law so I thought I would make her a Mocking Jay pin. I made it out of shrinky dinks

I found an image of the Mocking Jay and printed it out. The size that worked best was 4″ across the circle since it shrinks to about 1/3 of the original size – so the end size was about 1 3/4″.
I taped the shrinky dink paper on top of the print out (if your shrinky dink paper isn’t roughed up for to be used with pencil crayons then you can use some light sandpaper on it and then it will work).
I traced out the outline with a thin permanent black marker and then coloured it in with a metallic pencil crayon (note the colour will get darker when it shrinks). Take the image off the print out to fill in any parts that need touching up.
Now the hard part cutting it out. Use a sharp fine tip x-acto knife to cut it all out. Be very careful on the inside – maybe even leave some of the really small parts as it’s really easy to cut right through the arrow. My tip would be when cutting to put the point of the knife in the corner of where you want to cut and then cut half way down the line and then turn and do the same to the other side.
Once it’s all cut out it’s now the scary part – shrinking it. Put on a cookie sheet with a piece of tin foil underneath. Heat oven to 325 degrees and put it in for about 2-3 mins. The cut out will curl and scare you that it won’t un-curl but it should. Once it’s shrunk and flat keep it in the oven for about 30 seconds more and then take out. If it’s still a bit curved then flatten with a spatula. You can remove the foil from the tray to cool.
Once it’s cooled you can add a pin back. Just a bit of glue on the back and place pin and allow to dry.
I’m very happy with how it turned out. I forgot to take a photo of the pin with the pin on it but I wanted to post now even without those photos.
I hope you like it.