Make some fun cheap ornaments

This is a lot like making rock candy. These are the ornaments my third period students made (see all the girly hearts?)

Go to the local food dog to the laundry aisle and look for a box of Borax (heck you might have some). You also need pipe cleaners and a container you can heat up.

Bend a pipe cleaner into a desirable shape that will fit in the container without touching the sides. Figure out how to suspend it (we used popsicle sticks and paperclips).

Heat up some water and pour lots of Borax into it and stir til no more will dissolve (you are making a supersaturated solution). Move said container, or pour hot solution into a new container. Suspend ornament in solution and wait ten hours. Done. These turned out way better than all the ones I saw pictures of online.
To get the crystals off the side of the container, heat it up a bit and they will re-dissolve. The best part is, Borax is a detergent so cleaning it up is cleaning the container.