Glow in the Dark Bats

Do you have a lot of pony beads laying around like we do? It seems to be the first choice for necklace making along with a piece of yarn. For some reason no matter how hard they try to pick all of the beads up there are a few strays. When you step on those little beads they hurt! I discovered online that pony beads can melt. We thought it would be fun to melt them down to make glow in the dark bats!

This project seemed easy enough for even the Little Chefs. We got out our supplies; a pie tin, a metal bat cookie cutter, glow in the dark pony beads, and one eyelet (not shown).

Little Chef D placed the cookie cutter inside the pie tin. She then placed the pony beads inside the cookie cutter with the eyelet in the center. Since the eyelet has a hole in the middle and will not melt it will be the perfect place to string the fishing line to hang it up.

We discovered it would be easier to use a more shallow cookie cutter to get you fingers inside to place the beads. The pony beads do not need to be smashed next to each other. Just place as many will fit inside while keeping them upright (holes facing up). This will allow the beads to melt evenly. There will be gaps but do not worry they will be filled in as the melting occurs.
Bake in a 400 degree F oven for about 30 minutes. It really depends on your oven and how the beads melt. At 30 minutes we checked and we still had holes in the bat so we set the timer for another 5 minutes. When the bat is completely solid remove it from the oven and allow it to cool. You will hear some cracking noises. I thought it was breaking, but it was just releasing from the metal cookie cutter. When cooled attach a piece of fishing line and hang it up.