While exploring ideas to craft for Christmas, I stumbled across this simple, quick and fun project for a crafty half hour with your kids. Great as a wet weekend time burner!

On several plus sides, it's very cheap to do (costing under £3 for the beads) and looks stunning when you're done!

Step 1: Collect Your Materials

You will need:

Coloured transparent sparkly plastic beads - I used pony beads
A silicone star-shaped ice cube mould
An oven
About 30 minutes
Something sticky like blu-tak or sticky foam pads to attach your magic stars to the wall/ceiling

Step 2: Add Beads to Your Mould

Take a handful of beads and spread them equally across the ice cube moulds so they're filled to the top.

Try not to overfill the moulds as you want all the plastic from the beads to fill the moulds and not flow over the edges!

Step 3: Bake Those Stars!

Turn your oven on to gas mark 7/220 celcius/425 farenheit and allow it about 10 minutes to come up to temperature.

Place your silicone mould on a metal tray and slide it onto the middle shelf of your oven.

Close the oven door and open all the windows (and external doors if possible) around the oven.

Melting plastic does produce some nasty fumes, so set a timer for 20 mins and leave the room while the oven works it's melting magic!

Step 4: Remove and Pop Those Stars

When the timer goes off, look into the oven. You should find the beads have melted together and filled the star-shaped mould to form your magic stars!

Hopefully you should see the stars are shiny and flat on top in the moulds. If they're a bit bumpy (which can happen in the 'arms' of the star), then set the timer for 5 more minutes to allow the parts on the side to melt and flatten down.

Once they're set, remove the silicone mould with an oven glove or folded tea towel and place them on a cooling rack or on the hob top. You should find that the stars cool down easily within 5 minutes.

After that, pick up the mould and use a finger to pop them out from underneath.

Step 5: Reflections and Improvements

Congratulations! You have now completed your first batch of colourful, sparkly magic stars and are ready to decorate whatever you like with them!

Here are some ideas for decorating with them:

Stick magnets on the backs of them and beautify your fridge!
Glue push pins to the backs and brighten up your pin board!
Add a blob of blu-tak to stick them to your windows to catch the light in a sparkly way!

Read on for some final reflections and improvements.

Step 6: Reflections and Improvements

To add an element of shininess, you could use pearlescent opaque beads - I'm hoping to try this out for our Christmas fridge magnets this year!

Normal opaque plastic pony beads are even cheaper than the transparent sparkly ones, so an even cheaper way of making magic stars!

Finally, and my favourite idea to try next, I discovered you can buy glow in the dark beads. Why not bake up a batch of glow in the dark stars? Surely a hit for your child's ceiling in a range of glow in the dark colours?!

EDIT: I've just baked up a batch of glow in the dark stars and they glow very nicely at night. You can even see the colours to a degree!

Thanks for looking and good luck with your batches of magic stars! I tried taking a photo but my camera doesn't do a long exposure so a photo of he baked stars under a lamp will have to do!