How to Make a Melted Bead Suncatcher Mobile

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Arrange beads within cookie cutters

   To begin, arrange your pony beads into the suncatcher shapes.
   
   This time, in addition to the cake pan and muffin tin suncatchers that we’ve done before, we tried some metal cookie cutters for fun shapes. We placed the cookie cutters in a metal pan and the arranged the beads inside.
   
   There might be a tiny bit of leakage out the bottom of the cookie cutters, hence the pan underneath.
   
   

2. Melt the suncatcher shapes

   Important Note! The melting plastic is not good to breathe, so this step is best done outside.
   
   We make all of our melted bead suncatchers on the gas grill outside, so that we don’t get any toxic chemicals inside. The grill works great and only takes about 10 minutes! You could also use a toaster oven outside. But whichever way you melt the beads, be sure to do so outside!
   
   And if you are doing more than one pan at a time, it will probably take longer to melt.
   
   

3. Let cool

   Once the suncatchers were cool, invert the pans and they’ll pop right out! We found that the cookie cutter shapes did not pop out as easily, but they did come out eventually!
   
   

4. Drill holes

   Use a power drill to drill a hole in each shape in order to hang it up. Each small shape got one hole and the cake pan suncatcher got five holes around the perimeter and one in the center.
   
   

5. Assemble the mobile

   Finally, assemble the baby mobile with string. The idea for the baby mobile was to use the big cake pan suncatcher as the top and hang all the little shapes from it. (You could also do this with an embroidery hoop at the top.)