Fun with Crayons

Now that Lexi is crawling I've had to spend hours picking up all the little things that Russ leaves on the floor.  I never realized how many broken crayons we have floating around here.  I couldn't stand the thought of throwing them away but didn't want to keep picking them up.  So, I decided to do a few projects with them that I used to do as a kid.

We started by sharpening the crayons down to piles of shavings, seperated by color.  Russ loved this part.  For some reason sharpening crayons is fun. 

Once we had the shavings, he arranged them on a sheet of wax paper that was on an ironing board.  After they were in place, we put another piece of wax paper on top.  Then, we placed a piece of foil on top of everything.

Take an iron and put it on low, and place it on top of the stack.  Do not slide the iron around!  Pick it up and move it from place to place, leaving it in each spot for a few seconds.  You can keep checking the crayons to see when they are the way you like.

Once finished, remove the aluminum foil and its sooo pretty!!  If you want, you can remove the top piece of wax paper, but remember that removing it will make the piece more fragile. 

We used the melted crayon art to make stained glass hearts.  We took colored paper and cut out hearts, then glued the heart on top of the artwork, attached a ribbon, and hung it from the window.  You can also fold paper into a card, cut a heart out of the front of the card, and glue the crayon art inside of the card so that it appears in the heart cut-out.  If doing the card, do not remove the top sheet of wax paper as it will break.

Our second crayon project was made using the tiny pieces of crayons that were too short to sharpen any further.  We just piled them into a muffin pan (ours was shaped like a butterfly, but any shape will work).  We put the left-over shavings in, too.  I then placed the pan in the oven at about 200 and watched for the crayons to melt, then removed it.  To get the piece out of the pan, just put the pan in the freezer for 5 minutes and it will pop out.  You can use the piece as artwork or as a new multi-colored crayon.