February Flashback

Hello! Yes, it's been too long between blogs again! I am working on a project that I want to post when I am done with it. But it made me miss my blog and I thought in the meantime I'd post something Zion and I did back in February and I never got a chance to post. Better late than never, right? Or we can look at it like this - it will help you prepare for next valentines... or give you a great rainy-day summer activity to do! Either way, enjoy!

Sweet Crayon Heart & Color-in Valentines!

If you have kids then you have crayons. Millions of them. And if you are a crazy, pack-rat, crafter like myself you keep all the ones your kids get when you go to restaurants too. So you have millions more. They are loving used by your little artistes, they break and then you have billions of broken crayon fragments! Well, for pete sake, DON'T throw them away! There are plenty of great crafty applications for broken crayons and perhaps I'll blog more of those later. But for this little handmade Valentine you melt them in heart shaped molds and make brand new multi-colored heart shaped crayons!. Of course you could use any shape mold, but these *were* for Valentines!

They are so easy! Remove the paper from your crayons and break them into tiny pieces. You can use an X-acto blade to slice the logs into smaller pieces. (Parents do this part!) Then let your kiddos pick out the colors to go into each heart. You may have to help persuade them to use a few bright colors along with the dark blue, green and browns. =) Bake them in the oven at 250º for 10-15 minutes or until they are melted but not so liquidly that you get brown sludge. After they cool just pop them out of the molds and rub any rough edges on a scrap piece of paper. Ta-da! Cute muti-colored crayons, perfect for coloring in the valentine.

For these cards I printed out sayings with my computer and used Stampin' Up's Sock Money set for the images. The sayings were all monkey related like...

Valentine, You got me Swingin’ on a Vine!
No Monkey-ing around, Be my Valentine!
I’m Banana’s for You!
You’re more fun than a Barrel of Monkeys!
You’re Top Banana!
Just Hangin’ Around, Hoping You’ll be my Valentine!

Then we used the Stampin' Up Top Note die to make the header cards for the packages. Put in a valentine, a crayon heart and staple the header card to acetate bags. Voila!

I let Z write on the header cards the To's and From's but you could go crazy and decorate that part as well! So many options. Now go dig out your muffin molds and broken crayons and have a ball. Because if it's like it is here, it's raining and the kids need something to do! =)