Winter Craft – Ice Sun Catcher

I wrote about a bunch of winter crafts to make in this post about a Hygge Winter and I picked one to make this week!  It’s frigidly cold here in the Northeast, so I thought it was a great time to try an Ice Sun Catcher. I had leftover, slightly mushy fruit and a few other bits from the pantry and there isn’t much more that this super simple winter craft calls for!
So Simple Winter Craft - Ice Suncatcher

It’s actually so cold out that my ice sun catcher has some snow frozen to it!  There’s something about seeing the brightly colored fruit and the green stems frozen in time that really gets me about this craft.  It feels like a little bit of spring frozen and waiting to come back to life.  That’s what a winter craft should be.  Seasonal, but looking forward to spring.  Cause winter is hard.  Just ask my fingers that almost froze to the camera while trying to take this picture!

Winter Craft – Ice Sun Catcher

Materials

Over Ripe Fruit – In my case a tangerine and some leftover grapes. I also used a few dried apricots

Seeds – I used sunflower seeds

Greenery cuttings – I cut mine right off my bushes in front of my house

A Round Disposable Pie Tin

A Piece of Twine, String or Ribbon – anything to use as a hanger for your Sun Catcher

Water

Step 1

Gather all of your supplies and lay your fruit, seeds and cuttings in the bottom of the pie pan in any arrangement that you love. Don’t love it too much though because in the next step everything is going to get a bit scrambled!

Step 2

Fill your pie pan about an inch or so with water. You want to almost completely cover all of your little bits of fruit and greenery, but not ALL the way.  If you leave the water just a bit below the level of your fillings, then they will poke out of the ice once everything is frozen.

NOW!  Did you just have an Oh crap! moment?  When you poured the water in, did your cute little design you made with your fruit and cuttings get destroyed?  Me too.  Don’t worry, you can sort of reconfigure things now that you’ve added the water.  But don’t go all perfectionist on this.  In a minute you’re going to have to pick the whole thing up and either put it outside to freeze OR put it in the freezer and everything will move around a little bit again.  Sometimes imperfect is kind of perfect.

Step 3

Cut a length of string or twine or ribbon and put it in the water.  You want it to really be “in there” if you know what I mean.  Lay it about half way done the pie plate and you might even want to put something on top of it, like I did with one of my apricots or grapes, so that it doesn’t float to the top.  You also will want to tape the string/twine/ribbon to the pan.  You want the string to come up through the middle of the ice, not just be floating on top because it will hang funny if that is the case and it may not be super sturdy.  The picture above might be a better explanation than my words!

Step 4

Freeze!  No, not you, freeze the sun catcher!  I was going to put mine in the freezer simply because it is so cold out that I didn’t want to go outside, however, my freezer is FULL.  So, I opened the back door and gently laid the pie plate on the deck.  Things moved around a little bit, so I did a little bit of reconfiguring the fruit and stuff, but, oh my God!, it was so cold I didn’t go crazy making things perfect.  By the next morning it was completely frozen and I popped it right out of the pie plate and hung it on a tree in my backyard!

There are so many things to love about this winter craft.  It’s pretty.  It’s cheap.  I think the birds will love it in the spring when it starts to melt.  I think what I love best about it is that it’s totally unique while still being perfectly simple!

I hope you give this a try!

If you Liked It Then You Shoulda Put a Pin It!

 

 

 

2 thoughts on “Winter Craft – Ice Sun Catcher”

  1. Sharon, thank you for your comment! I hadn’t thought about that, but you gave me the greatest idea! I think, and don’t try this unless you’re adventurous and don’t mind a possible major fail, but I think it would work if you poured resin over the little bits of fruit and greenery. Of course, the birds might not like that temptation of fruit and nuts locked in resin, but it would look pretty! I will have to give this a try! Thanks! Marybeth

  2. I love your sun catcher…We live in San Diego so we can’t keep it frozen, any ideas to get the same effect:
    Thanks,,
    Sharon

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