Oh goodness! I haven't posted anything in over a month! I've come to realize that working full time makes it a little harder for me to thrift store shop and blog about my cool finds. I usually work 9-5 and those are the same hours most thrift stores are open so that puts a damper on my fun. But in the evenings I have plenty of time to surf through Pinterest and find some awesome ideas.
Recently I found a neat idea for a sun catcher made from plastic beads. The directions were simple enough, pour plastic beads into a cake pan (no liner required) and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. This project sounded super simple and since I had all the materials at hand I thought I would give it a try.
I had a huge bag of beads handed down from my mother (she makes jewelry and these beads were leftovers from her) and I knew there would be plenty of plastic beads. I had to go through the beads though because I found out a lot of them weren't plastic. It took A LOT more beads than I had originally thought. But of course you can use whatever size of pan you'd like.
Before I put them in the oven and the bowl of non-used beads.
I tried to use bright colors and stay away from darker colors. I used all sizes and shapes of beads.
So, the directions online said to bake for 20 minutes. I ended up baking mine for almost an hour; I guess it was because a lot of my beads ended up being non-plastic and didn't melt or took longer too.
One thing the directions did not mention was the smell! The plastic smelled pretty bad melting. :(
I waited for the pan to cool and then the sun catcher just popped right out. Since I used such a variety of beads, my sun catcher turned out looking nothing like the one I saw on Pinterest.
Here it is hanging on our porch. I just used some fishing line to hang it up. It looks better far away then it does close up. I'm going to try another one, but for the next one I plan to go buy some beads (when they go on sale of course, or at a thrift store!) that are the plastic you can see through.
