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 this, this 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...