Crystal Bowl DIY  with Mom’s Lifesavers

Remember those baking crystals we used as kids?

We made sun catchers and tried like crazy to keep the colors separated using tweezers?

I can remember sitting at the kitchen table as a kid working so hard on my little suncatcher only to shake it on the way to the toaster oven and bump the crystals everywhere!

This Crystal Bowl DIY and tutorial takes all the stress out of sorting crystals and makes a great project to do with the kids.

The finished bowls are great for little treasures and collections.

Getting Started

• Craft Baking Crystals – you will need bags of baking crystals. You can find these at you local craft store like Michaels, in the kids crafting section, usually near the suncatchers or camp craft supplies. You can also buy them in larger bags online, we found some here.
• Disposable Aluminum Pie Plates – various sizes
• Cookie Baking Sheet
• Aluminum Foil
• Oven Safe Glass – we used a Ball jelly jar, a Pyrex measuring cup would work too
• Oven
• Pot holders or oven mit
• Kitchen Timer

Steps

1. Gather the above supplies for the Crystal Bowl DIY and preheat oven to 375F
2. Place craft baking crystals in the aluminum pie plates. You want somewhere around 1/4 of an inch of crystals to cover only the bottom of the pan 
3. Place pie plates on a cookie sheet and place in oven. Bake for approximately 15 minutes, crystals should appear shiny and melted. Remove from oven.
4. After the crystals have cooled, around 10 minutes or so. Use a butter knife to lift crystal disc out of pie plate
5. Remove crystal disc from pie plate. Congrats! You have just completed the first phase of your Crystal Bowl!
6. Gather your aluminum foil and oven safe glass
7. Sculpt a ‘dish’ over the bottom of the jar using the aluminum foil
8. Place your dish sculptures onto the cookie sheet
9. Place the crystal disc over the aluminum foil dish sculpture and place in the oven
10. If you have a light in your oven you can watch the process of the melting/sculpting. Our dishes melted in about 12 minutes. Once melted, remove from the oven and let cool completely. 

Crystal Bowl DIY Tips

• There was little odor to the melting plastic baking crystals, however we would recommend using a fan or opening a window to increase ventilation
• No two bowls will be alike – go with it, consider it a ‘mystery craft’
• If you use white or black baking craft crystals they will appear opaque, clear baking craft crystals will appear more glass like