Weeks after I posted the sign-ups for our homeschool valentine exchange, I found out that my son’s class was going to do an exchange. So, of course, we’re a bit in over our heads in pink hearts and lace at the moment.
I love homemade valentines, especially ones with the SUPER EMBARRASSING puns on them. The punnier, the better. Now, since I don’t totally want to ostracize (ostrich-izing them WOULD be cool though) my kids, I don’t make them put horrible puns on their school cards.
For this year’s class, we made heart crayons. This is a great way to reuse the old broken crayons in the bottom of your kids’ art boxes. Crayons below the RoseArt quality should probably be avoided, because when you melt them, the color separates from the wax, and you get a layer of clear wax on top of the crayons.
Materials:
Broken, peeled crayons, in about 1cm long pieces.
A baking pan with small compartments. IE: Mini-muffin pans. Big muffin pans are fine, but they make large crayon pucks that take a lot of crayons to make.
Preheat your oven to 325.
Break up your crayons and put them in your pan. If you mix too many colors together, you’ll get brown. I liked the idea of having some without pink/red, because most of Tommy’s class are boys.
Check your crayons every 3-5 minutes; when they are fully melted, take them out of the oven. Place them in the freezer for around a half hour.
Remove the crayons carefully. Be gentle, they are rigid and very breakable at this point.
I’m pretty sure these are going on card stock with the words: “You make Valentine’s Day so much more colorful!”
Unless I can think of something MORE embarrassing.
Tommy made collage valentines last year. A fun way to use up paper scraps.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:38 am
I love the colors! I’m sure they will be a big hit! I just recently found a mini doughnut pan and made crayon necklaces by hanging them on strings, I should put them on my blog.
February 5th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
I LOVE these! We made ‘hockey puck’ crayons last week, and it was sort of a fail between the super old crayolas that didn’t want to part with their paper and the ‘below the Rose Art’ quality crayons (probably from Applebees). But the girls were busy for a while.
Now I wish I had pick up those mini silicone trays! (I have a HUGE muffin pan with wax it that I can’t get out… it’s on the back porch FREEZING to death!)
February 5th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Those are cute! Were they hard to get out of the molds?
February 5th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Looks like you bought the heart molds for ice cubes that were $1. I did too. We made heart jello jigglers in ours. We may make crayons…but they always end up on my walls!
February 5th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
They’re easy to get out of these trays. But they can be harder to get out of a metal (inflexible) tray, and if you don’t let them get properly cooled.
Lisa, I think we ended up using a couple Red Robin crayons that gave us the weird separated wax layer, too. They already had their paper off, so I didn’t know they were crap.
RoseArt crayons used to be so awful, just leaving a vaguely colored wax streak on your paper. When I worked at the toy store, I used to give people purposeful looks and say “PLEASE buy the Crayola crayons. PLEASE.” because I hated RoseArt so much. Happily, they’ve gotten their act together, and make decent craft supplies now.
Crayon snob? Yes. I make no apologies! I am what I am!
February 6th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
These are fun, and so much better when you get together and make them with another parent/kid combo from the class like we did last year.
After making 60 Valentines this year, it feels like Valentine’s Day is nothing but puns. I was walking around all day looking at stuff and punning. My husband was not amused. Expect a good one from us!
February 6th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
I’ve never thought to use heart-shaped pans before. What a great idea! And that pun isn’t too punny! LOL!