Sun-Catcher Fun

So I was browsing through Pinterest like I so often do and came across this Bead-dazzle me a Sun-Catcher at Clever Catastrophe. What a fun project to do with the kiddo.

So given it's the month of October, we made a Pumpkin themed sun-catcher and then the kiddo chose all the different beads for our second one.

Materials Needed:

Cake Pan - As noted in the tutorial I came across and I highly agree with this, any scratches in your pan will show up on your sun-catcher, the hubs said it adds character!
Metal Washers - I used these to leave a hole in my sun-catcher to make hanging easier.
Plastic Beads - Any color you want!

Let's Craft:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Arrange beads however you would like, if using pony beads like these, I placed flat with hole side up. I'm sure it would be okay if the beads were on their sides too....but I tend to be a perfectionist so this is how I did it!
*Please note, the melting plastic will produce an odor.

Like I said, arrange beads however you would like.

I used two metal washers per sun-catcher, double stacked them. Bake for 20-30 minutes, depending on your oven. So I would just check after 20 mins and go from there. After it's done baking allow beads to cool and then just pop them out of the pan. Now, on our second sun-catcher I think I left it in the pan to cool for longer than I should have....it was difficult to get out of the pan. Popped a few beads out while trying to remove it, but like the hubs says, it adds character! I used grosgrain ribbon to hang them.

And done! How cute are those? And what I love about this craft...the possibilities are endless. I do believe we will make more for each holiday! Hope you enjoy this craft as much as the kiddo and I did! :)

Outdoor Halloween Decor

It's October and it's time to put out our Halloween Decor. This is something really fun and easy to make and inexpensive. My husband, son and I made this last year and it's one of my favorite decorations we have!

We went to Lowe's and got a 2x4. These are the measurements we had them cut.
Base (bottom) board: 29 1/2"
Pumpkin: 8"
Mummy: 10"
Frankenstein: 18"
Black Cat: 9"
Ghost: 8"

We already had craft paint on hand, but you can pick some up from Walmart or Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby will have a bigger selection. We used orange, green, black, lime green, gold and white. For our base board we picked up a can of webbing spray from Hobby Lobby, it only cost $4.99. It was a last minute idea that I thought would look cute. :)

You can obviously put them in any order you would like, this is just the order we chose. We did nail them to the board and did leave one nail sticking out further from the rest to help is stay on the ground. For the Mummy, we picked up a ACE Brand Self-Adhering Elastic Bandage. Once everything is painted, dried and put together we sprayed with clear sealer to help keep the paint safe!

This was such a fun family project and is such a cute decoration. We really really enjoyed making these, I hope your family does too! :)

If you are looking for another fun Halloween craft idea, check out  the Outdoor Halloween Ghost Decoration blog entry.

Outdoor Halloween Ghost Decoration

This is so so super easy and just a fun little craft to do with the family. Also, super inexpensive, which is always good! What I love about this is you can make more than just ghost. You could make pumpkins, black cats, mummy's or Frankenstein's.

We only made 4, but you can obviously make more. We picked a 4x4 from Lowe's, there machine couldn't cut it (weird, huh?), so the hubs picked up a saw while we were there too. Since we were making this a fun family craft we ended up hand painting these, obviously spray paint would be faster. And then we used black craft paint, that you can pick up at Hobby Lobby, to paint the face. And we just gave them different expressions. We did hammer a nail on the bottoms, or you could do a large screw, so we could push it into the ground and it would stay standing!

So you can do whatever measurements you want, I didn't want them all the same size. So these are the measurements we went with.
15"
20"
21"
17"

This really was a fun family craft that we enjoyed so much, hope your family enjoys it too!
If you are looking for another fun Halloween Decor craft to do check out the Outdoor Halloween Decor blog entry!