Summer is here and with that I have been cruising the boards looking for fun, easy crafts that I can do with the kiddos. I came along this one on Pinterest and thought that it should be easy enough to do Pony bead sun catchers . I had some pony beads that I bought and used at Scouts so I did a test sample. The beads were different than what the picture showed and I liked the sun catchers she made, so I loaded the kids up and we went to Joann's to buy more pony beads.
I really never thought I would use my original bag of beads and at one time wondered why I was even buying them. Now, I'm going to the store to specifically buy more and in a variety too!
Crafters addiction for sure. I let the kids pick out what style of beads they wanted to use and we came home to start arranging. It really is super simple.
I took my cake pans, and layed down one layer of beads. I popped them into the oven for 15-20 min at 400 degrees. Because I'm melting plastic I opened up the windows and doors, turned on the ceiling fans, because of the fumes. After I felt that the beads had melted enough I took the pan out of the oven and put it on a cooling rack. Once the pan was cool I flipped it over, gave it a couple of taps and this popped out.
The one shown above is Kelly's, she was going for a rainbow look. I haven't gotten a good picture of the others because I need to drill holes so that I can hang them up. One some of the catchers if the bead hadn't melted enough or there was too much spacing it would come out with little gaps, like Kell's did. The kids really enjoyed this and it took a while because I had them make sure all their beads faced in the same direction. I think the beads would melt just fine if they were just layed out willy-nilly, I'm sure we will make a few more before the summer is over so I'll be able to test this theory :)
Oh and yes the photo is sideways, I completely forgot to rotate it
*Carrie*