Pony Beads

So, I joined the latest internet crafting craze and tried my hand at melting pony beads. It's an inexpensive and easy project so I do recommend it. It does have one downfall - melting plastic in your oven will give off a fume. Either open the windows and turn on a fan or do it outside in a toaster oven or BBQ.

I bought a 1lb tub of these beads in assorted transparent colors at Michael's for about $6. It made 3 projects. First, I placed a cookie cutter in the middle of a non-stick cake pan. Then I fished out the red and orange beads because they were just too intense for the other mellow colors. I used the cookie cutter to create a heart shape hope in the center. Popped it in a 400 degree oven for what the instructions said was 20 minutes; however, I preferred the effect at about 30 minutes.

After you remove from oven let it cool about thirty minutes. If it's cooled it will pop right out of the cake pan with no problem; however, the cookie cutter was not non stick so it took a bit of prying. My sun catcher is pretty sturdy because I added at least a double layer of beads but some folks who carefully place a single layer of beads say theirs is delicate. So, removing a cookie cutter without breaking the piece might be a challenge if you use a single layer of beads. Also, I did take a box cutter to the edges to smooth it a bit.

Next Jerry drilled a hole for me and I used green floral wire to create a hanger.

For second project, I filled a large cookie cutter placed on a cookie with the red and orange beads. The cookie cutter was not perfectly flat so you can see a little "run" by the tail. I will need to trim that off. I also tried to lift off the cookie cutter too early, thinking I would avoid the slight difficulty of removing the heart shaped cutter in first piece, and that caused the edges of the fish to have a slightly raised edge (which I liked :). By the way, it wasn't at all difficult to remove the cooled fish from the cookie cutter - must be the difference in removing a cutter from the melted beads versus removing the melted beads from the cookie cutter.

Finally for third piece, I dumped all the remaining beads, which included all colors, into a smaller cake pan and made an 8" disk. While it cooled I placed a stainless steel bowl on a cookie sheet then placed the cooled disk on top of the bowl and returned it to the oven. As it heated up it soften and took the shape of the bowl. That took about 10 minutes. Let it cool and then popped it off.  Lesson learned - if you use a cake pan with "Ecko Baker's Secret" relief on the bottom, it will show up on your project. Can you see it on the bottom of the bowl?

Busy, Busy, Busy

Lately all of our time has been centered around work, taking care of the dogs, and Marge. Long story short, she is in rehab probably until October 28th. Oh! And I flew to Atlanta last Friday so my mom could buy a new car! We drove it home last weekend.

This weekend is cousin Sarah's 8th birthday so I'll go to her party tomorrow. Today, however, was for crafting. One I will share.

I bought this baroque frame from Michael's (on sale for 40% off), a white double mat, rhinestone stickers and fancy paper from the scrapbooking area, ribbon, and paper flowers with "pearl" centers. I found a place online where you can insert your pedigree information and then print it off for free. So I created a pedigree chart for Sarah, added the corner decos to the mat, then hot glued ribbon and flowers to the outside of the frame. I don't know if she will appreciate her family tree at 8 years old but I do believe she will like the frame.

Earlier this week I got a good start on a fund-raiser wreath for Ratbone. I like to take my time and think about what will look good and what will look overdone. I found this cool red burlap ribbon with buttons on it at Hobby Lobby. My first time in one of those stores and I got there as they were making the "we are closing in 5 minutes" announcements. I was determined to find something in 5 minutes.