Winter officially begins on December 21. Here's a fun craft to try during the colder weather. There are literally NO purchases necessary and it also incorporates some physical activity. I also love that this craftivity is appropriate for all ages, so if you have multiple children of different age groups, it will still be loads of fun!
First, we pulled out all of our pie pans (you can use any shallow container). We needed something to serve as the hanging loop on each ice light catcher, so we simply used some holiday ribbon (plenty of that lying around). I also used a clothespin to attach the ribbon to the pie pan so it would stay under the water and freeze properly.
That's it! Everything else we found in nature. We bundled up and traipsed around outside in our neighborhood to collect pine cones, various pine needles and greenery, brightly colored berries, and whatever else we might find! You could also incorporate birdseed into this, but we did not have any so we stuck with our bounty from nature and some citrus fruits we had in the fridge.
Once we returned home, we laid everything out on the table and placed our items into the pie pans, creating our own unique designs.
A few tips:
- The more decorations you use, the less things will shift around when you pour in the water.
- If you use citrus fruits, cut off the top and bottom so it is flat on both sides. Otherwise, the ice may push the rounded fruit right out of the design when it freezes!
- Once you are happy with your designs, move your creations outside to a flat surface and (slowly) pour in about an inch of water.
- Using distilled water will give you crystal clear ice, but we just used tap water this time.
Next we waited... and waited... and waited... for our ice light catchers to freeze. This can be a multiple day project, depending on how cold it is when you decide to try it! For us, it took two days for the designs to fully freeze. We brought them inside and placed them very briefly in a warm water bath to release them from the pie tins. Then we simply hung them up in the light to enjoy until they melted away!
