Pinter*Mel: Official Pinter*Mel Project #6: Melted Bead Suncatchers

The Inspiration: Cheap Beads Melted into Cake Pan Suncatcher

The Process:

The premise is simple enough; a single layer of beads poured into a cake pan, put in the oven on 400F for 20 minutes. Once cooled, flip out of the pan, drill a hole, string it up with ribbon. Bob's your uncle.

You will need:
- A cake pan, or disposable tartlet pans from Dollarama
- Cheap beads...emphasis on CHEAP (I'll explain why further down)
- Washers or a drill (whatever your more comfortable wielding)
- Ribbon

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Put the pans on a cookie sheet and drop a washer into each of them.

At this point I realized that 6 suncatchers was a little overambitious considering I didn't even know if it was going to work. So I pared it down to 2.

Lay a single layer of cheap beads into the bottom of the tartlet pans.

If you're using the washers instead of the drill make sure the beads touch the washer, but don't cover it, you want to be able to thread the ribbon through the hole they provide.

If the oven is finished preheating, throw those suckers in.

Set the timer for 20 minutes. (I wasn't fast enough with the camera on this one.)

Also, make sure to turn your hood fan on to at least low. It's not really stinky, but it definitely lets off a little odour.

After 20 minutes they should be melted and ready to come out.

They should take about 10-15 minutes to cool down enough to flip out of the pans.

Hrmmmm, a little opaque, but they melted really well.

At this point I grabbed my jewellry making supplies because I had some great beads from the Sassy Bead Company that I thought would work GREAT as a suncatcher.

The blue ones are the expensive ones that I used...I also decided to make two more of the cheap bead ones.

So I put the expensive blue ones in the over on 400F for 20 minutes just like the cheap ones.
20 minutes later I took them out...

Okay, I thought, they're expensive, maybe their expensiveness means they need more heat.

Waited another 20 minutes and took them out...

Still nothing.

Then it dawned on me. They're made of FRICKIN' GLASS. They aren't going to melt unless I have a frickin' kiln. DERP!!!

Still have four mostly opaque (non) suncatchers though!