Monday, March 28, 2011

Kid Craft: Soda Bottle Beads

I love Family Fun magazine, but I hardly have time to read it, let alone actually do anything but dog-ear the pages of it. There are so many cute projects in the April issue, like thisthis and this.

I'm trying to make an effort to start doing more organized arts and crafts projects with my three year old. She loves to draw and make things. That girl can (and has) filled a 100 page drawing pad in two days. She also has a new found love of jewelry. I decided to surprise her with a little Family Fun project during my youngest's nap on Friday. We made our own beads out of plastic soda bottles.


She loved it. I loved it. This is a really neat project, and it doesn't take long to do at all. All we needed were two 20oz plastic soda bottles, Sharpies, a pencil, and some embroidery floss.



Unfortunately, the instructions for this project aren't up on Family Fun yet, and I don't feel right about posting them here before they are, but if they add them later I will definitely come back and update this post. If you want to try it now, there is a similar tutorial on Instructables. They call for pliers and a heat gun, but the magazine tutorial calls for tying string around the beads to hold them together and heat setting the beads in the oven. UPDATED 3/31/11: Here is the link to the instructions on Family Fun!


Once the beads were done, we added some store-bought plastic beads and strung them together with round cord elastic to make bracelets.




My daughter is very proud of her creations, and it was a fun way to spend a little alone time together on a Friday afternoon.




I'm linking up...

23 comments:

Anna said...

wow, this is really cool gwen! I think my girls and I will defintiely have to try this!!! fun. :)

chris said...

These are so cute! What a fun spring break project.

Shelley said...

What a great idea! I love this and so will my daughter. Thanks!!

Linda said...

This is great and looks like a lot of fun. I will pass along to my daughter who has a 3 yr old and 7 yr old who are artistic too.

Carol, The Answer Is Chocolate said...

What a cute idea and great recycling project. OK I absolutely love the pic of your little one waiting patiently at the oven! That is too sweet.

Amy at Ameroonie Designs said...

Cute, cute project! What a fun thing to do with your little one. Love how the bracelet turned out too! She'll treasure it I'm sure. :)
xoxo,
Amy

Andi said...

I love family fun!!! They have the best ideas! I'm trying to do more crafts with Natalie too. In fact Saturday we made a bird house and some bird seed pine cones...it was a lot of fun!

Unknown said...

So awesome! This is one of my saved projects too. Family Fun usually just gets the once-over where I tear out pages and then I never get back to it, unfortunately. If they would just start blogging, then they'd have me ;)

Craftberry Bush said...

So perfect for Bella and I , we've done bracelets out of bottles
And beads out of rolled paper but never this ! Thank you!
She's gonna love it! Xo

Unknown said...

Great recycling kid craft, Gwen! The added colour with the sharpies is really smart. Those beads are just cool!

LeAnne said...

Oh my gosh, I can't wait until my GD is old enough to make these! CUTE!

Angie@DesertWind said...

Cute! I passed this along to some of my friends, via Facebook.

Mary Barker said...

How long and at what temperature do you bake? maryebarker@yahoo.com

TraceyKnits said...

I am definitely going to try this with my kids once the full instructions are available. They love any project involving a sharpie... and jewelry is a BIG bonus!

KJ@letsgoflyakite said...

Great project Gwen. Your photos are fabulous, these are the perfect beads for little hands.
Love this project and post.

Ashley said...

This looks like fun! My daughter, who is also 3 :), would love this!

Naturally Carol said...

What a pretty bracelet as a result of all this creativity..definitely one for kids and mums to try!

Sarah @ Modern Country Style said...

I love that idea!! It looks one of those ideas that's very doable AND looks great too! 100 pages in two days? Wow! Hang on a minute....don't I know someone else who can churn out a million crafts projects in two days? Oh, yep, it's YOU!!!!

Sarahxx

Christy said...

This is such a cool idea! I love it!

BizCrafter said...

I did these years ago, I even made earrings and sold at these at the swap meet. it was a big hit and everyone loved the reusable plastic craft. we even made ornaments a few years ago for our tree, added beads gave it a really beautiful accent to our tree. love to recycle!!!!!

kristy.lynn @ kristy.makes said...

well i guess i'm going to have to go out and pick up a family fun this month now! how very cool.. love this idea..

thanks for sharing, found you via skip to my lou! :)

Brooke said...

Oh mu gosh...so fun! I love that mag too. My neighbor gets it and I steal it from her whenever I'm picking up their mail! tee hee hee. What a great and super fun project. i think even my boys would love this one - the whole oven, heat shrinking thing. How the heck did you cut your bottles so perfectly? xo

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this tutorial. The link to the Family Fun instructions didn't work for me, but this one looks like the same tutorial: http://spoonful.com/crafts/make-plastic-beads

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Related Posts with Thumbnails