Hi, Songbirds and Buttons readers! 
I’m Tricia, author of Mama Marchand’s Nest and jewelry designer/shop owner of Mama’s Nest Designs. I’m thrilled that Kendall invited me to share her space today so I thought I’d share a fun Pinteresty craft that my daughter and I did together!


You may have seen this pin floating around Pinterest for awhile now and I finally decided to try it out to see if it ended up being as cute. I clicked over to the source to find the instructions and prepared my “ingredients.”

Well, as it turns out, those instructions aren’t entirely accurate, namely the temperature of the oven and how long it takes to melt the beads. I had to tweak it a bit. Check it out!

What you need:

Cooking spray
Oven safe bowl
Baking sheet
Oven
Patience
What you do:

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
2. Coat the inside of your oven-safe bowl with cooking spray – you may need to take a paper towel & wipe out the excess, like I did.
3. Load up your bowl with perler beads, making sure that there are no large gaps & that they are in a single layer, optimal for melting.
4. Put your bowl on a baking sheet and place on the middle rack in your oven.
5. Sit in front of your oven and watch the magic happen for 15ish minutes.*
6. Remove baking sheet from oven, use pot holders to lift the bowl off of it and set the bowl on a cool surface.
7. Once the bowl has cooled, you should be able to pop the melted bead bowl out with no problem. If you have a trouble spot, simply use the end of a sharp knife to loosen the beaded area from the bowl.
8. Wipe off underside of melted bead bowl to remove any excess cooking spray.
9. Ooh and ahh over your awesome new bowl.
10. Figure out what to do with it. *wink*

*N and I ended up making two bowls so we left ours in the oven for 20 minutes. We ended up having perler beads left over so we made some Christmas ornaments, a heart key chain, and a bird magnet.

How to make other crafts with the leftover beads:

1. We reused the same baking sheet, after it had cooled down, and covered it with wax paper. DO NOT DO THIS. I should have used parchment paper and we ended up having a little bit of smoke to deal with after about 8 minutes in the oven. USE PARCHMENT PAPER. 
2. We put cookie cutters down on the paper and filled them with a single layer of perler beads. You don’t need to use cooking spray for this project. 
3. Put them in a 400 degree oven for 8ish minutes.
4. Once cooled, pop the shapes out of the cookie cutters.
5. Tie ribbons for the ornaments, use jump rings for the key chain, and magnet strips for the magnets.
This craft project was so much fun and definitely toddler friendly. N and I had a blast doing this together! For $5 and in an hour, we made two bowls, three Christmas ornaments, a key chain, and a magnet. Not bad! If you decide to try it, tweet me and let me know! *smile*

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