Melted Pony Bead Ornaments


A few months back I melted plastic pony beads in a muffin tin to make some cute rainbow colored sun catchers. I had just enough beads left to make another project, so I thought I'd try my hand at melting some in cookie cutters.  I lined a pizza pan with tinfoil and arranged my cookie cutters.


Next I filled the cookie cutters with a single layer of beads.  Instead of mixing all of the colors together, I sorted them and put 2 or 3 different complimentary colors in each one.


Next I used the same method for cooking the beads as last time.  I preheated the oven to 400 degrees and opened a bunch of windows (be sure to do this on a day you can open windows--it stinks).  I let them cook for about 30 minutes before they were mostly flattened.  One the cookie cutters didn't work so hot--the beads didn't melt into the crevices, and so it had to be tossed after melting.  But the rest all turned out great. They all popped right out of the cookie cutters once they had cooled (they did leave a little plastic residue that I had to scrub off though).


After they were out of the cookie cutters, I used a sanding attachment on my Dremmel to knock down any jagged edges.  Then I drilled holes in the top of the ornaments so that I could hang them.  I lost two more ornaments during this process.  The drill bit would accumulate melted plastic as it drilled, so my first method of just going quickly to try to prevent the build up, didn't work.  I got the bit completely stuck (with melted plastic surrounding it) in the ornament and had to break the ornament to free the drill bit.  I found that slowly drilling the hole part way and then flipping it over and drilling it the rest of the way was the method that worked the best.  It may work better with a more powerful regular drill--but I couldn't find the charger for my drill's battery, so I made due with the Dremmel.

Below are the ornaments that survived.


I strung them up with some cording and hung them on the tree.  They really shine and twinkle when lights shine through them.  I hung up all of my surviving ornaments, but I think the hearts will become sun catchers for Valentine's Day. So whether you're hanging them in your window or on the tree, they are a fun little project.



Google made me this lovely twinkle gif of the snowflake ornament--how cute is that?


Comments

  1. LOVELY! I will try this few months from now for our Christmas ornaments 2014 =) Thanks for sharing how you did it.

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