Stained Glass Sun Catcher

My mom celebrated her birthday this past week and so the kids and I decided to make her something extra special and pretty! I had been wanting to make a sun catcher with Alivia for a long time. After realizing how easy and quick these were to make I think there will be many more made in our future.

Materials

Plastic Faceted Beads
Pie Pan
Nylon String
Suction Cup (to hang the sun catcher)

Directions

1. Pour your beads into the pie pan. You can arrange them into a special design or pattern. Both Alivia and Bennett had fun taking handfuls of beads and dumping them into the pan and arranging them in their own particular order.

2. Make a design inside the beads. The heart came into our design accidentally. Originally we were going to make a sun catcher that filled the entire pan. However, I had only bought one package of beads and there was no way that was going to be enough. So our fix was to carefully create a heart in the middle of the pan. You can use a cookie cutter to make your shape perfect if you have one. I had to use my hands due to my missing cookie cutter. Unfortunately I had to make my heart several times since Bennett kept sneaking up behind me and shoving his plastic pig in to eat (never a dull moment in this house).



3. Carefully place the pan into a 400 degree preheated oven for 15-20 minutes. As the plastic melts there will be a strong smell. We opened the windows up in the house and the smell went away quickly. I have heard that melting the beads inside a grill works if you want to avoid the smell in your house.

4. Once the beads have melted take a needle and poke a hole near the top. This will allow you to thread your nylon string once cooled.

5. Once the sun catcher has cooled it will pop right out of the pie pan. You can then thread your nylon string through the hole and hang it up in the window using a suction cup. We purchased a package of eight really cheap at our local craft store.

Liv had a hard time taking the sun catcher down to wrap up. She wanted to sit and stare at it all day. I will admit it caught the sun and shone beautifully. Almost like stained glass! Now that I know how easy this sun catcher was to make you better believe it will be a part of our future projects! I am thinking this might be the perfect Christmas Ornament gift from the kids this year.