I know I’m late jumping on the Miu Miu 2010 Spring/Summer DIY bandwagon but I still love this line! The cat, dog, swallow and nude women prints are so iconic. So last Thursday we held a Pop-Up summer fashion accessories workshop on how to make your own Miu Miu summer brooches (read the workshop recap here).
There are already tons of great tutorials on this amazing spring/summer line including tights (via The Haute Pursuit), Mary Janes (via Lions, Tigers and Fashion Oh My), collars (via fieldguided) and brooches (via Miss at la Playa).
Inspired by all these tutorials I used a different material for creating Miu Miu brooches and keychains: Shrinky Dinks! If you’re not familiar with SDs, it is plastic material that shrinks after you bake it. A must have for every crafter – there are so many uses for it. It was perfect for the brooches/keychains because the end result is really durable. You can find it at a big box craft store and occassionally in dollar stores (although usually these ones have images already printed on them).
Above are the Quick Fix photo instructions. Photos can be found on my Flickr page.
Below is the tutorial for creating your own DIY Miu Miu brooch or keychain:
DIY Project: Spring/Summer 2010 Miu Miu Brooches and Keychains
Materials
- Shrinky Dinks
- Permanent marker
- Pencil crayons
- Scissors
- Toaster oven
- Large paper bag/cardboard
- Glue gun
- Plastic string (for cat whiskers)
- Brooch backing or keychain hoop
- Hole punch (if making a keychain)
1. Take a Shrinky Dink sheet (8×10″) and using a permanent marker trace out one of the images on the smooth side of the sheet. I used Miss at La Playa’s templates of a cat, swallow and nude woman and enlarged them. You can find those enlarged versions on my Flickr page.
2. You can colour in your image with pencil crayons on the rough side of the sheet (I decided not to to leave the brooch white). Then cut out the image, leaving the black outline intact.
3. Pre-heat your oven to 325F. Cut out a piece of brown paper bag or cardboard that will fit in your toaster oven. Place your cut-out pieces on to the bag and put in the oven. You will see your pieces start to shrink curl up onto themselves – not to worry because that is the magic of shrinky dinks! They are ready to take out of the oven when the pieces lie flat.
The photo above shows how much they shrink – to about 1/3 of its original size and much thicker. Plus the paper is hot – use an oven mitt to remove the paper.
4. Using a glue gun, attach the cat’s head to the body. Then add whiskers: I cut out plastic string and glued them to the front of the cat’s face.
5. Then attach the brooch backing to the back of the cat.
6. Your brooch is done!!
Here’s a blue cat keychain I made: before you pop the pieces in the oven, hole punch a hole at the top of the piece. Also if you colour the image, you can use clear nail polish to seal the back of your piece so that the colour doesn’t get on your clothing.
More samples – enjoy!!
Related posts:
You can save yourself a bit of money and reuse some plastic packaging by using #6 plastic containers instead of Shrinky Dinks. Most take out salad containers are made of clear #6 that you can draw on and shrink in the oven just like Shrinky Dinks.
I used plastic containers that were being throw out to make a bunch of necklace charms. You can see how I did it here.
Thanks for the tip Allison! I’ve tried plastic packaging and it works out great. I wanted to go for larger brooches/keychains and so opted with the 8×10 shrinky dink sheets. (If there were larger SD sheets out there I would have used those!) But for smaller charms the packaging works well too.
i found a trouble looking for the Shrinky Dinks
but i made the doll version of these miu miu cat broocs!
x
Hey Lin, would love to see your doll version! If you’ve got a photo of your DIY cat send it over