Melted bead hearts

 

Love is in the air, hearts are everywhere...even in our house.

 Today I decided to make this old fashioned craft my mom used to make. She didn't make them so fancy, she would just use tin caps to melt the broken pieces of plastic in. But, with all the beads available nowadays and the broken cd cases and whatnot, you can make some real pretties. I put foil in a small pan, place a metal cookie cutter on top, and arrange the pieces and beads on it. Turn on heat, cover with a lid, and for the next few minutes check to see if they are melting. Sometimes you need to shift things a bit while melting, or press some pieces deeper down. But, you MUST have good air circulation. Please do it only if you can have your windows open so you don't inhale that fume-its bad.

 Once yo have melted them enough, take out the foil and hold it under the water to harden. Then you can easily remove it from the cutter. 

 With this one I got a little more creative. I scrunched up the foil to give it a rough background, which is seen in the above heart. Then I neatly arranged the beads into a flower shape.

 If you melt a hole into the top with a small nail, then you can make these into necklaces. 

A perfect gift!