My daughter and I undertook making valentines for her class this year! We had such a blast that I thought I would share the craft with you all! We are pretty proud of how they turned out!
Valentine Crayon Hearts
We began by searching the house for any broken or old crayons that were no longer in use. I was surprised by how many we found! Then we started cutting all of the old scraps of crayons into little bits. We cut them into pieces approximately 2 cm by 2 cm and that seemed to work just fine!
When we had crumbled all the crayons we had (and we were making 30, so we used a lot of crayons 6+ packs and all the crayons we could find in the house)we put them into silicone baking cups in the shape of hearts. We only filled the very bottom of the cups, about 3 – 4 cm deep so that they would not be too heavy to affix to cards later on!
The silicone cups were great because we didn’t have to try to pry them out of a metal sheet. Rather we could just move the silicone around to get the crayon heart loose. We bakes them in the oven at 250 degrees for 10 minutes. This was the perfect amount of time to melt the crayon but not lose the great pattern on the front of the hearts! We were so pleased with the way they turned out! Each heart looks completely unique and the are incredibly bright and colorful!
To turn them into Valentines for her classmates and teachers, I had my daughter cut out circles from this super bright construction paper I had kicking around. On each heart we wrote “You are Special” or “Happy Valentine’s Day” or “Be my Valentine” and my daughter signed the back of them!
To complete them, we used double sided tape to make the crayon stick to the construction paper. The only really finicky thing I found about this craft was that the crayon hearts do not end up level when they cool off. We ended up having to take a knife and level them off by scraping them down. It was a little arduous, but I think it was worth it in the end!
Apart from the scraping at the end, this was a pretty easy craft and it really kept my 5 year old entertained and occupied for a few hours! The crayon cools way quicker than you would think. The silicone muffin cups can be found at Michael’s (though I am sure you could find them at any baking store, this time of year) and were a little bit more than I was expecting! However, at Michael’s you often get a discount on a single item, so we used it for these! All in all, a great experience, and we got to re-purpose all those old crayons instead of throwing them out!
