Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Love...Love...Love...Homemade Valentines

Avery's pre-school class is having their "Friendship Party" tomorrow, and opposed to buying our valentines this year, Avery and I decided to make her own.
I figured that if we took a few minutes and looked around the house, we could figure out something fun to make that would
a.) not cost anything
b.)reuse some items from the house
c.)fully involve Avery in the process.

It didn't take long for us to find a favorite craft and make it into something new and fun.

CRAYONS!

First, we stripped all of the crayons of their papers and divided them into color families. By the way...stripping the crayons is the worst part of this process, but to make it a little easier you can use a knife or razor to help remove the paper.



My grandmother gave me a few silicone molds as gifts in the past few years. After sitting in a closet (because I'm not a good baker), I decided to give them over to the craft gods...and use them to MELT CRAYONS! You can't tell by looking here, but these molds are bugs, and the little individual ones are hearts.

Avery put the broken crayons into the molds. Some of them were done by color family, some were all mixed up. I just let her have fun with it.



We melted the crayons in the oven. If this were a recipe, I would say 350 for 10 minutes. Honestly, it doesn't matter. Just put them in there until they melt. AND...please, learn from my mistakes, and be sure to put foil or parchment under the molds. I am still attempting to get the wax off of my cookie sheet.



Let the crayons cool for about an hour, then peel them out of the molds. Make sure that the crayons are completely cooled and hardened, or else it will be a big ole mess.



We made....



Hearts!



Flies!



Butterflies!



Dragonflies!

And...


Ladybugs!


Then, Avery practiced her cutting skills and cut out a ton of hearts. I wrote her classmates' names on one side of the hearts and little messages on the other side, such as...
Hi Buggy, You color me happy!
or
Hi Friend, You color my heart happy!

Avery wrote her name and decorated each Valentine with stickers. It was so cute. I would give her a valentine, and tell her who it was for. She would pick out stickers for each kid, and said things like "Ellie LOVES Sleeping Beauty" or... "Oh, I HAVE to find a horse sticker for MJ, she LOVES horses!" I loved that she took the opportunity to think about what each classmate would like.

The only thing that I bought for this little project were the little ziploc party bags from the Dollar Store.




I would say that we're pretty happy with the way they turned out.

2 comments:

tania said...

Wow, you are so creative! The homemade valentines look amazing!

BoxcatAV said...

Very cute! And impressive. I love it.