Girl Scout Jeweler: Name pendant from Egypt

For girl scouts my daughter was supposed to create jewelry inspired by another culture.  She decided to make a cartouche necklace.  We used the lid from a salad at Costa Vida (yum!).  The plastic should be have the #6 recycle symbol.  She printed out a picture of her name online at virtual-egypt.com (5 1/2 inches tall) and then traced it onto the plastic lid with permanent markers.  She cut it out and punched a hole in it.  Then we put it the oven at 350 for 2-3 minutes.  Until it was done curling and flat again.  Then voila, a cool egyptian name pendant!

Note: I used a screen shot to get a printable copy from this cartouche maker website.  Or you could just free hand a traceable alphabet.  You can have one name cartouche ready for each girl making a pendant to make things easier.  My daughter embellished the edges of the cartouche with curly cues and dots which was fun and cute.    The rings and tools to attach the pendants to a chain or rope are in the beading section of any craft store.

Update:  #6 plastic is hard to find.  You can order shrinky dink refills and use the melting instructions supplied or try the dollar store jiffy foil baking pans with plastic lids, for each pan you will get a 7"x11" sheet allowing you to make four 3.5"x5.5" sheets.  This isn't a perfect solution, because the plastic melts differently than shrinky dink film.  After a lot of experimentation we found that 300 degrees for about 5+ minutes got the pendants past the horribly wrinkly, curled state and back to flat.  At hotter temperatures they melted too quickly and curled too much to eventually flatten out.  I would definitely practice this once before the girls do it.

Here is another blog about cartouche pendants

Go to the blog Adventures in middle school art