“I trust Severus Snape completely.”

From the moment he is first introduced in the series until the final line in Deathly Hallows, there were debates among readers on the loyalties of one character in particular: Severus Snape. Was Snape good? Was he evil? Was he a double agent? A triple agent? Why did Dumbledore trust him? Could we trust him? Who’s side was he really on? Now that THE END has come, all has been revealed (if you haven’t read the books, don’t worry, I won’t spoil it for you) and to be honest, I miss that debate. However, I know there are those of you out there who only watch the films and although that may frustrate me at times, in a way this makes me happy because the Great Snape Debate can still go on (well, until 2011, at least).

Harry Potter Crafts Week Two:

Shrinky Dinks

If you have never played around with shrinky dinks before, get ready to have a lot of fun because they are quite addictive once you start making them. You can buy shrinky dink sheets at craft stores and they even sell printable sheets now, but for those of us who love to recycle trash into crafts, you can actually use #6 plastic, which is usually found in restaurants & delis as to-go or takeaway containers.

I decided to make pins/badges to sport at the Half-Blood Prince midnight release. I made a few different designs available in a PDF file to get you started, including several Snape designs so you can proclaim which side of the debate you are on, but you can make any shape or design you like (just make your design at least 2 1/2 times bigger than the desired finished size). I found several HP inspired fonts here if you choose to make your own.

Supplies: Aside from #6 plastic, you will need scissors, permanent markers, color pencils/crayons and super fine sandpaper, foil and a oven pre-heated to 350ºF. Depending on what you want to make with these, you might also need a hole punch, glue and pin backs.

Step 1: Print out your design & trace it onto the plastic with a permanent marker.

Step 2: To color your shrinky dink, flip it over to the wrong side rough it up using super fine sand paper—or if you are me and don’t have sandpaper lying around the house, use the fine side of a foot scrubber. It’s basically the same thing. What we are doing is roughing up the plastic so that the color pencils & crayons have something to adhere to. Don’t color it too dark because it will darken once we shrink it. You can also just use permanent markers, but I have more color pencils than markers. So there.

Step 3: Cut out your desired shape. If you wanted to turn these into jewelery, now is the time to punch the holes.

Step 4: I got the best results by placing the sanded side down on a small tray I made out of foil and placing that directly on the oven rack. It shrank faster and turned out more uniform. The oven should be pre-heated to 350º and will take about 1-2 minutes to shrink. You can read a few different tutorials on shrinking #6 plastic here and here.

Step 5: Ta-da! String it on a necklace or glue a pin back on it and you are finished!

If you have any questions about this tutorial, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or email me. And if you make the “My Sweetheart” necklace Lavender Brown gave Ron, please, please send me a picture (all my plastic containers were too small to try it out)!

Happy crafting!

All art is by Heather Campbell of Accio Brain. She is awesome and hilarious (This needs to be a Christmas card). Please go check out her work.