♥Like a Lady ♥

I know a ton of you have been waiting for this one. Teaching you to make your own plastic keychains!

To start off, I think the biggest question everyone has is what I use to make them. I work with shrink film. You might be familiar with Shinky Dink brand shrink film as a kid. I use Grafix brand white inkjet shrink film. The inkjet kind is relatively pricey compared to the regular kind. If you’re using regular, I don’t recommend you stick it in your printer. Sharpie markers would be good for that.

Alright, now open up the file with the images that you’re working with. Make sure your images are a lot bigger than you want your finished product to be since they shrink significantly.

You’ll also want to lighten the opacity to about half. I go somewhere between 50-60%.

Now print your image out! I’ve found that it works best for me when I have it at the plain paper setting, and standard print quality.

Holepunch with a ¼" holepuncher BEFORE you shrink them. It’s so much more work to have to punch holes when your plastic is thick!

Cut out your design, leaving the amount of border you want.

Set them on a tray for convenience. An aluminum foil sheet works too, but I recommend cookie trays because they are easier and quicker to get out of the oven.

Preset heat. Your shrink film package will tell you what temperature to set it at, but I find that it isn’t always accurate for me. I generally set temperature to 350 degrees or so.

Put them in the oven. Remember to keep track of time! I leave them in for about a minute and a half.

After time is up they should be super small! Magic!

If your charms are not flat, put something heavy on it right out of the oven when they are still hot and malleable.

If you’d like to, you can seal them now. In my last two batches, I used clear topcoat nail polish. The problem with that is that I need between 3-5 coats of it, and it takes a while to dry. I’ve been experimenting with modpodge.

For lariats, you can use jump rings or lobster clasps.

Here is one that I made that wasn’t sealed. The finished texture after shrinking is a little bit rough. There’s nothing wrong with leaving them unsealed, but because they are inkjet printed, the colors wash right of without protection.

This is one that was sealed with modpodge. The colors become a little more vibrant and smooth and water resistant. Things often get stuck on when applying or drying so be careful.

These ones down here were sealed with clear nail polish. They come out shiny if you put enough coats, but the grainy texture will still be there.

They shoved herbs in their breathing hose because they knew the air was bad and hoped it would help, and *they were right* in theory. The plague itself was not an airborn virus, but they couldn’t know that and it wasn’t the only thing killing people at the time anyway, and they covered *all* their bases. If they’d had the technological knowhow to make air tanks, or even better air filters, they would’ve. They just made the best air filters they could.

What we think they wore isn’t exactly what they wore, and what they actually wore would later be repurposed into scuba suits (and thus spacesuits too) and *actual hazmat suits*, because the theory was sound, the materials were just lacking, and honestly what they did with the materials they had was hardcore.

they wore full face protection which avoids the most obvious mucosal transmission routes

INCLUDING GLASS IN THE EYEHOLES. They invented safety goggles before most of the world had nailed down corrective eye glasses yet

they wore additional head protection to cover seams in their mask/hoods

they oiled and waxed all their clothes to make it fluid-resistant

they wore separate but tight fitting equally if not more fluid-resistant gloves and/or armcuffs so they could keep hand contamination to a minimum even when dressing/undressing AND they only wore the suit in areas they thought was contaminated and took it off before entering uncontaminated areas

they may have used herbed vinegar to clean, and if the stories are true this was clever because 1) it’s available and portable 2) pretty effective as far as medieval disinfectants go versus the damage it does the the user (as opposed to what they had for bleach at the time, and the actual percentage level in alcohols at the time which was mostly insufficient for task as well as being needed for more important things); vinegar is *still* a decent disinfectant even now

It honestly took doctors well into the twentieth century to get that level of obsessive attention to hygiene and cross-contamination back. A whole lot of babies and mothers wouldn’t’ve died, for instance, if a plague doctor instead of an obstetrician supported the birth because A PLAGUE DOCTOR WOULD KNOW TO WASH THEIR GODDAMNED HANDS.

Actual plague doctor’s outfits:

❝  rengoku aniki! ❞

”when you fall inlove with some boy someday, you’ll change too Kanao”

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Have you ever heard of Shaun Keenan? Probably not, but you have now.

Amazing art of dinosaurs in the wild American West? Yes please!

There’s so many he’s done and they’re all just the best aesthetic.

What I never knew I needed but a void has definitely been filled.

Go to his website and give some support!

This Man Is Paying for His Public Transport with Plastic Bottles