Bake
It/ Shrink It Cupcake Charms from Great Gizmo's 4M range allows children to create, bake, and shrink their
very own cupcake jewellery charms!
Each
kit includes 20 pre-cut cupcake shaped shrinking sheets with four colour
pencils so you can start designing and colouring them in straight away. No fiddly cutting out required!
The rough side of the cupcakes need to be coloured in using colour pencils. Kizzy and Freddy did this together, as he wanted to help his big sister.
When they are all coloured in, they are ready to bake in the oven to shrink them down.
You need to put them onto a baking sheet covered with foil and put into an oven at 160 degrees.
The cupcakes curl up and then flatten out very quickly. Cook for a further 30 seconds and allow to cool. Freddy loved watching them through the oven door and was very intrigued to see them shrink into the cupcake charms.
The shrunken cupcakes are quite thick and hard and the colour is intensified by the baking process. Each cupcake charm then needs to be attached to a metal ring. They come with a pre-cut hole which makes it easier, but the metal rings need to be prised open, threaded through and then squeezed back shut. This was very tricky and fiddly and quite hard on the fingers, so Kizzy got her dad to do it for her!
The charms can then be made into jewellery. The set includes beads, string, ear-ring attachments and chains to make your own jewellery designs, or the charms can be attached to the cute cupcake display stand which is included in the set.
On the stand, it makes a pretty ornament for a girly bedroom. Kizzy decided to do this as she liked the look of the charms on the stand, but she still has all the jewellery making accessories if she ever decides to have a go at making a cupcake design bracelet in the future.
The set costs about £10 and contains everything needed to create 20 colourful, cupcake shaped charms. Some adult supervision is required for the baking and help will be needed to attach the rings. It's a nice craft activity that will keep youngsters happily entertained and the end result is something they will be proud of. It is versatile in that the activity can be extended to include making key rings, earrings and bracelets using the charms. It allows kids to be really creative!