Pinterest - Heart Shaped Crayons

Photo taken by Laura Henry

So my big find this past week on Pinterest was crayon heart valentines found on whipperberry.com.  I know there are a ton of these out there but I based mine off this website.  Go check them out for some pretty cool suggestions.

What you will need for this project:

• Crayons
• Heart shaped silicone mold*
• Oven
• Foam tape
• Card stock

* The molds that I used were heart shaped individual cupcake molds.  I wasn't able to find the tray kind (as shown on the website, everywhere I looked they were sold out) and I wasn't sure that a non-stick metal heart-shaped pan would work.  I found out from my friend, Sarah, that the non-stick pan works just fine too.
 
Directions:

• Preheat oven to 300 degrees
• Earlier in the week I had gathered crayons that were laying around the house that we had accumulated from various restaurants or ones that had gotten broken from the boys being to rough with them.  We probably had roughly 100 crayons.
• You will need to remove the paper coverings.  I found that using an x-acto knife (as suggested) worked the best for doing this. 
• Next you will need to chop up the crayons into smaller pieces (or you can break them into smaller pieces)  It is suggested that the smaller the pieces, the better.

Photo taken by Laura Henry

• Fill the heart molds with the crayon pieces 1/3 full.

Photo taken by Laura Henry

• Put in oven on middle rack and bake for 15 minutes.  I found that my first batch (which I placed on the top rack) took about 25 minutes.  Just watch for the crayons to melt.  Some may not melt completely but you don't want to keep them in too long or the pigment will separate from the wax and your crayon won't color.
• After most of the crayon pieces have melted remove from the oven and let cool completely.  Be careful to not jiggle them too much when you are pulling them out of the oven or the colors will run together.  Also let them cool completely before removing them from the mold.  If you try to pop them out to early they will crack.  I had one do this but I just remelted it, which worked ok but it wasn't as pretty as the rest of them.

Photo taken by Laura Henry

• Next we went to the computer and created a simple card to attach the crayons to.  I printed "You color my world Valentine!" on the front of the card & "To: & From:" on the back.  I cut them out, leaving them square and used foam tape to attach the crayons to the middle of the card.

Photo taken by Laura Henry

I had enough crayons to do 27 heart.  I only had 12 molds so I turned off my oven in-between sets.  It took about 1 hour per 12 crayons to melt and cool.  If you have a lot that you want to do I would suggest buying more molds.  I found them at Michaels for around $10 but I had a coupon and I got them for around $6.  I did find the tray molds at Wal-Mart the day after I did them.  They were priced around $6 for a tray of 6 molds.

Photo taken by Steve Henry

Photo taken by Steve Henry

Here we are filling up the molds.  Tad tried to help too but Bart keep telling him he wasn't doing it right.

Photo taken by Steve Henry

My littlest, Tad.  He's only 2 (ok, he'll be 3 in April) but so grown up.









Bart making a funny face.  He is quite comical sometimes.

We had a great time.

Photo taken by Steve Henry

Also the crayons were not completely level on the bottom so the tape didn't hold them too well but it worked ok.  I probably would have dolled up the cards if it was my daughter, which I don't have - yet..., giving them out but since these were going to be from my boys I left them plain.

Photo taken by Laura Henry

It was a fun project that Bart was able to help me with and he is 4.  He helped pull off the paper, (after I scored it with the knife), filled the molds and helped attach them to the cards. 

Photo taken by Laura Henry