I experimented with them quite a bit many years ago. You can put any image you want on them. You must be sure to use a clear varnish to seal it at the end or the image will be prone to scratching off. You can shrink it to very thick, just leave it in the heat for longer, but be aware that the longer it is heated/the thicker it gets the greater the distortion. The material does not shrink evenly, at least the sheets I used to use, it will shrink more top to bottom than side to side.

I hope that was helpful. I look forward to see what you come up with.

You can try printing on it or running it through a photo copier. Also you can do a toner transfer where you take a regular photocopy of what you want and use Acetone (nail polish remover) to transfer it to the plastic by saturating the paper. The image comes off reversed, but the faction symbols are symmetrical so that won't matter. Also you can just trace. The plastic is transparent, just put it over your image and color like a kindergartener.

After shrinking yes. It's just plastic.

When I was a little kid, many, many years ago, my mom, dad, and grandfather worked together to make me some Shrinky Dink toys that were basically minis. Here's what they did:

1) Created and shrunk the image.

2) However, they added a "tab" under the image, so that it could stick into something like a candle.

3) My grandfather worked at Westinghouse at the time and got a bunch of extra elevator buttons. They used these as bases, and filled them with some malleable but drying material (epoxy or something... it was decades ago! I don't remember!)

4) Embedded the Shrinky Dink in the button base standing up.

I could see something like that working here. One option would be to find something that can be used as a 1-inch base and filled in. On the other hand, I believe they already make 1-inch bases with notches in them that can be purchased in bulk. The trick here is finding the most secure way to affix the tab to the slot (which might be much bigger.

Either way, someone with sufficient artistic talent/computer savvy (which wouldn't be hard to find in this group) could do a printed version of the bases (including name, cost, faction, symbols, etc), which could then be affixed to the bottom of the construction. When we did the custom Next Lost Twenty, one of our guys did two sets of bases: one was white text on black (which looked very close to the "real" ones), while the other was a more-readable black text on white. Stick that on some photo paper, and I think you're good to go.

For that matter, the right stock of photo paper might be tough enough to sub in for the Shrinky Dink itself.

You just have to watch it and pull it out when it gets to where you want it to be. A bit of experimenting will be required.