Sparkling Sun Catcher

There’s nothing quite like the morning sun streaming through the windows unless, of course, you have a sparkling sun catcher to catch the rays and spread a rainbow of color around the room. Sun catchers aren’t hard to make and they may be something your children would enjoy trying their hand at.

Sun catchers are easy to make. All it takes is some crafting wire, translucent colored beads, and fishing line. The benefit of using crafting wire is that you or your child can create any number of shapes with it. Your child can use their imagination to create butterflies, stars, birds, or anything their heart desires. They can even make completely abstract shapes if they prefer.

Your child can make a drawing and use that as the pattern to shape the wire, or they can find a picture out of a coloring book. The simpler the drawing and pattern, the easier it will be to create the desired shape. Your child may want to place circles, colored in with the color of the desired beads, on the drawing to show where the beads will be placed.

Do you want a simple sparkling sun catcher with only the outline of the drawing or do you want it to be more elaborate? You can use a larger gauge wire for the outline of the sun catcher and then use a smaller gauge wire for adding more colored glass beads. The choice is yours or your child’s – you can add as many pieces of wire as you like.

Parents will want to cut the wire to length rather than allowing children to do this step. You can then place one bead onto the wire and wrap the wire around the bead to keep it in place. Now it’s time to get the wire into the right shape by bending it.

Your child can begin threading the beads following the color pattern they made on their drawing, being sure to either put glue on either side of the bead or placed within the bend. They could also wrap the wire around the bead and then continue with the pattern. When the final bead is placed and you’re near the end of the wire, hook the end into the bead or wrap it around the bead to finish it off.

To display your sun catcher, cut a piece of fishing line long enough to hang it from a nail around the window or from a suction cup with a hook. Sit back and enjoy the beauty that your child helped to create. And when the sun gleams through your window, you can think back to the fun you and your child had making it.