Valentine’s Day Crayons

We’ve been very crafty and very snotty here at our house in the last week. Fun combination! Of the 5 days last week, 2 were sick days for the kids, one a snow day and one a school holiday. My twins only made it to school one day, for the valentine’s party, and Yoshi made it to school 2 days.

For the next few posts, I’ll share some of our valentine’s day fun.

I like to make my life easy, so we pick up premade paper cards for the kids. With 3 boys in school, we had 48 valentines (minimum) flying out of our house, I just don’t have the energy to do completely handmade. But, crafty as I am, I had to help my crafty kids add a unique touch. We love melting crayons in this house, so when I saw silicone ice cube trays in heart shapes at Target last month in the ‘dollar’ section (they were actually $2.50 for 2 trays), I knew what we had to do.

There are instructions for melting crayons all over the internet, so let me just share my tips.

• I like to melt at 250 degrees. It takes a bit, sometimes up to 10-15 minutes depending on your oven and the brand of crayon, but just keep an eye on it. I set the timer for 8 minutes to start, then check every 2-3 after until they have turned to liquid.
• The most difficult part of this project is prepping the crayons. I highly recommend using a craft (X-Acto) knife to slice the paper off and then to chop the crayons into appropriate size pieces for your mold.
• Don’t worry about gaps. I just place crayons inside the mold in a single layer, with a few gaps, so you get a nice flat result.
• Watch your brands! You can see in the photos we had a few restaurant crayons sneak their way in. Some brands just won’t melt. I only buy Crayola crayons for our house for many reasons, the easy way they melt is one of those. Don’t fret though, if you have bad crayons weasel their way in, it just makes for some unique texture.
• If you don’t have shaped molds, my favorite melting containers are individual silicone mini cupcake cups. With ridges that mimic paper liners, they create great edges the kids love to color with!
• We used hot glue to fix them to the paper valentines. This was tricky and may not be the best solution. I used a generous amount of hot glue, let it cool a bit (so it didn’t melt the wax too much), then pressed the flat side of the crayon into it. Some I didn’t let cool enough and they melted, some cooled too much and they popped off. At their best they removed easily, but it made them stick long enough to travel to school and make it into valentine boxes.

If you had fun, crafty ideas you used this year for classrooms, be sure to leave a description and link in the comments to share with me!