Plastic Bead Sun Catchers – Kids Crafts Contributor

I’m so excited to introduce Kari!  She regularly blogs over at Raised Southern and she is going to be swinging by every month and sharing a fun kid’s craft with you!  Take a minute to leave a comment below welcoming Kari.

It’s been absolutely beautiful outside lately. It’s been in the 70’s, sun is shining, and everyone here on the gulf coast of AL is coming out of hibernation, which means Spring is upon us. With Spring coming we are all thinking about everything we want to do and getting ready to enjoy these long Spring and Summer days. Here in our home we do a lot of crafts, especially when the kids are out of school and I love doing crafts that add to our home and give the kids a chance to show their creativity. 

On this particular day we made Sun Catchers! These sun catchers are so beautiful and shine so bright when the sun hits them. You can hang these inside you home in a window or outside in the trees as they began to grow their leaves.  This is such a fun craft you may have a yard and house full of them by the time your done. 

 All you need to make these beautiful sun catchers are clear color plastic beads,{it doesn’t matter if they are shaped or not just as long as they are the clear plastic ones} A round cake pan {or any other pan you may have, I haven’t tried using character pans}, & your oven! Now if  you want to be really creative you can also use metal cookie cutters to fill with the beads and make different shapes {this would be a lot of fun for Christmas to make Christmas Ornaments}

What you will need to do: 

• Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees
• Cover the bottom of your round cake pan with the color beads you want to use.( you don’t need to spray or line the pan with anything) ~ We used a mixture of colors… Light Pink, Hot Pink, & Purple – Blue, Light Blue, Green, Light Green- & – Yellow, Red, and Orange.
• Heat in oven for 20 minutes.
• Pull out of oven allow to cool…5-10 min. once it has cooled you can just flip the pan over and let the kiddos knock all over the bottom of it and it will pop right out for you.
• Once you have it out and its completely cool, gently drill a hole through the top of it and tie fishing line around it to hang up where ever you and the kids would like to see you sun catchers.

We really had lots of fun making these round ones, I definitely plan on making some more of these and trying different shapes and colors combinations. These sun catchers would also be perfect to give to Teachers as a Summer Gift from your children, or to give to grandparents for Mothers Day. We did give two of these away. The kids love making enough to make sure their Yaya {grandma} and their Ma {great-grandma} get one as well.