Key chains have practical and aesthetic purposes. Without your keychain, your house keys, car keys and office keys will be all over the place or get scattered or lost inside your bag or home. Key chains can help organize your life and remove unnecessary stress brought about by lost keys. There are many keychain styles, designs and materials available when you go to the department store. However, if you have a passion for arts and crafts, you can easily make your own key chains. The materials you will need are simple items you can easily find at home or at an arts and crafts store, and making them can be a fun bonding activity for the family.
To make the keychains, you will need aluminum foil, permanent markers, an oven, and for the main keychain you can choose between a piece of transparent shrinky dink paper or a cake pan, depending on the end product that you want. This is purely your preference, but if you use transparent paper, make sure that it is the thick plastic coated kind and not thin transparency film.
First, you have to cut your transparent paper or cake pan depending on the size and shape of the keychain that you want. But when using transparent paper, cut its size to six times larger than your intended keychain as they will shrink during the process. For the cake pan on the other hand, you can make several key chains so the rest of the cake pan will not be discarded.
When you have the desired shape and size, you can write your message or draw an image on one or both sides of the keychain, again depending on your preference. You can use different colored pens as long as they are permanent markers. The use of crayons, whiteboard markers or ordinary colored pens is not advisable because they will melt and fade towards the end of the process.
Next, line your oven with the aluminum foil and put your keychain in it, baking it for two to four minutes until the message gets really embedded and will not get scratched or fade. After two or four minutes, turn off the heat and leave the keychain in the oven to cool down. If you can take it out safely, you can have it cool outside the oven as well.
Finally, you can add a key ring on the top side of the keychain (by pinching a hole just big enough for the string to be inserted) where they keys will be placed. Be sure to use a color that can complement you main keychain for a full coordinated look. Now, your keychain is ready to use and you can do the rest of the key chains in another batch.
This is the classic keychain procedure, however, you can use other alternative materials such as wood (you simply have to carve it the desired shape), or beads (string them together to form a three dimensional shape). Just add a little creativity and you can make one key chain after another and get the same wonderful effect.
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