Hanging Ice Hearts

i posted a teaser of this last week, and now our weather is actually too warm to make them outside. :) Seriously, it is 57 today!! Since most of the country is freezing right now though, i thought i'd post them anyhow. These are really easy, and make a great decoration outside in the winter.

These were again, inspired by the ice buntings over on Two Chicks and a Hen. Since we are getting close to Valentines day, instead of using a cupcake tin i used a heart shaped candy making pan.



You can find these at any craft store or candy making store i would think. My pan is metal, but you could easily use a plastic or silicon mold. So to make these, all you really need is a mold, some string, tape, water and food coloring. i used waxed beading thread to hang mine, because it's very strong and i thought it would last longer than regular string. You could also use waxed tooth floss.


First thing we did was cut our strings and tape them in place. You want some string inside your mold, and then plenty of extra string to hang them.


Once all of your strings are in place, add water to each mold. i let me daughter do this by giving her a small bowl of water and TBSP. Make sure and keep a towel handy to clean up any overflow. :) Once each mold was full of water we added our food coloring. Most of them only need about 1-2 drop of food coloring. We made red hearts the first time and rainbow hearts the second time. For the rainbow hearts we used red, then orange (red + yellow), yellow, green (yellow + blue), blue and purple (red+blue).

Once you have them all colored you are ready to freeze them! If your temps are below 32 degrees F, you can set them right outside and let them freeze. If it is above freezing outside, you'll want to place them in a freezer. Leave them alone for a couple hours to freeze completely. Then pour a bit of hot water on the back of the pan to release them from the mold.


Now you can hang them outside to decorate your trees or along the fence. i like to find a small branch to hang them on, and then tie more string on the top of the branch to create a mobile. These guys were hard to get a focused picture, the wind had them spinning everywhere.


These are the first ones we made, just plain red. Perfect for valentines day.



i think these would be more striking if we had all that snow everyone else is getting. :) As long as it stays below freezing outside, you can leave these out and they will look fabulous! Mine are currently all in the freezer, waiting for another cold snow day!