Sun Catchers

What better was to liven up a window than adding some color? That's exactly what we did for the playroom window. We made a colorful sun catcher! I have also seen these used to make serving stands for cakes, cupcakes, or appetizers buy gluing a glass candle holder to the bottom of the main circle below.

The supplies for making sun catchers
Pony Beads
A metal pans in the shape you desire
An electric drill
yarn, or string

Plan out what you would like to do with your sun catcher. We decided a large circle with 4 dangling sun catcher was what we wanted. I told Gabee he could draw a picture with the beads. He originally wanted to make Jedi fighting with X-wings flying in the background. Then I informed him he needed to fill the whole pan, he gave up and filled the whole pan with all the colors. His patience is not the greatest. I wanted willy-nilly colors thrown together but I was more specific about some of mine. I wanted only pink, purple, and a few red and orange.

We used a muffin tin to make the dangles and an eight inch round cake pan to make the main piece. Make sure you are not using pans you plan to use again for cooking as after baking I was left with a thin plastic ring around the tins where the top of the beads cooled and popped off.

When you are filling the pans make sure to only fill it 1 bead deep. No beads sitting on top of other beads or it will lead to interesting overlapping colors. While you are designing your color patterns, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

We popped them in the oven and waited. It took about 10 minutes for them to melt down and as you can see it had started to bubble a bit. I don't know if this was because I left them in slightly too long or were bubbles left over from the beads.

 

Probably because I left them in a bit too long as the entire main level of my house smelled of burned plastic and my kitchen got quite smoky. (EDIT: A friend of mine informed me that they ALWAYS smell horrible no matter how long you cook them. You have been warned!!) I opened a window and turned on the fan but be prepared for this outcome. They, as you see above, are not burned even a little. Now just wait until they cool and they pop out easily from the pan. While they are cooling you might hear loud pops and cracking. I had to keep checking on ours because I thought they had shattered and exploded in my kitchen. It took about 30 minutes before we could pop them out.

 

Next we had to drill holes in them. Learned more lessons. Maybe it was just me and my drill bits are old and worn but it wasn't so much drilling as melting a hole through the plastic by sheer friction. Make sure you have a good grip on the plastic because if you don't a few seconds after the drill makes it through the plastic the plastic will harden around the drill and then you have a cracked colored plastic disk. The plastic got stuck to the end of my drill and hardened there quickly after pulling it out of the disks.

 

I used a pair of wire cutters to snap it off. On a few of them it took a little bit more wiggling and cutting but the drill bit is as clean today as it was before I started this project.

 

After drilling the holes we used some plastic/nylon type rope used for making key chains to attach everything together. We tied a knot at one end slipped in through both holes and tied another knot at the end to hold it in place.

Not the greatest picture as it was about to storm but you get the idea.

Grand Total = $6

 It would have been cheaper but I bought the big container of beads for $5 thinking I was going to have more children over to make them. If you look at the second picture up top you will see the container is almost empty but that is the second batch we made for a picture since I forgot to take one before we baked them. I bought  a cake pan at the dollar store and used and old muffin tin I had already.