How to Make Winter Ice Ornaments

Winter is on its way and cold temperatures will force many a boisterous child indoors on frigid days. How will you keep your children occupied during their forced stay indoors? One way to occupy them is to use the wintry weather to your advantage and busy the children making ice ornaments.

The following project involves using inexpensive items such as pie pans, strings or shoelaces, and optional items such as flowers, seeds, shells, twigs and even glitter to make sparkling ice ornaments. These ornaments will make a wonderful outdoor decoration for the winter season.

To begin obtain an aluminum pie pan, string or shoelaces and decorative materials for the ornaments. Place the decorative materials in the pan in any arrangement that you would like. I have found that the brighter the materials are then the prettier the finished ornament will be. If you plan to use glitter in the ornaments add only a small portion (about 1/4) at this time.

Remember that these ornaments will be hanging on tree branches outside, and when they melt the materials that you use to create them will land on the ground. For this reason I suggest that you use biodegradable materials, or decorative items that will be easy for you to spot and pick up that will not harm neighboring plants and animals.

Next, fold the string or shoelace you plan to use in half so that the ends of the string or lace are touching. Put the strings or lace in the pie pan, with the ends touching the middle of the pan. The string or lace that you have chosen should be long enough so that the folded end will hang several inches over one side of the pie pan. Place some of the decorative materials over the string or lace to help weight it down for the next step.

Now, slowly add water to the pie pan. The more slowly you add the water the less you will disturb the materials inside the pan. Fill the pan with water stopping just below the rim.

If it is below freezing outside then you can place the pan outside to freeze. But a better idea is to place the pan in your freezer so you can be sure that it will not be disturbed. After you place the pan either outside or in the freeze add some of the rest of the glitter, if you opted to use it. Stir the mixture lightly, taking care to avoid disturbing the string. Then sprinkle the rest of the glitter over the surface of the water.

It will take several hours for the ornament to freeze; you can make use of the wait time by deciding where to place the finished ornament. Once it has frozen solid, pop it out of the pan. Then hang the ornament from a tree branch outside.