How to Recycle Crayons ~ Valentine’s Day Kids Craft

This project has it all – it is fun, inexpensive, quick, green and just plain cool. Since Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, I decided we would share our fun craft in the form of Valentines. Who wants to place bets on which kid has the coolest Valentine’s in preschool?!

Restaurants dole out crayons by the handful. I try to refuse them when I can, but more often than not we wind up adding crayons to our collection. Since I can’t bare to throw anything away, we have more crayons than any kid can use. In addition to restaurant crayons galore, we have an ever growing collection of broken bits. The craft gives all of those extra crayons and broken bits new life.

What you need:

• Crayons – lots of them
• Silicone candy mold

Remove the wrappers from your crayons and break into bits. Fill your mold with the bits. Place your mold on a cookie sheet (for support – trust me on this), and melt in the oven on 230 degrees for 12 – 15 minutes. (I put them in for 12 minutes, but they needed a bit more time so I watched until they were fully melted.)

TIPS

• If making crayons with little ones who won’t be able to help in the label removal process, remove the labels before inviting them to “help.” It is a process.
• For my mini heart mold, I used approx 2 1/2 crayons per heart. (So for a 12-hole mold, plan on 30ish crayons)
• Want bigger crayons? This mold makes 2 1/2 inch hearts.
• After you make crayons in your mold, you won’t want to make food. Some of the cheap crayons will stain the mold.

Once the crayons cool (several hours) pop them out and ta-da! You will be amazed how cool your new crayons look – I know I was! I’ve been wanting to do this with K for some time, and now that we finally got around to it I want to do it again with different shapes.

To make your own Valentines, download this printable. You will get six Valentine’s per 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. I printed mine on white card stock and backed with red card stock that I edged with fancy scissors, but I added red boarder to the printable so you don’t have to.

Hint – use rubber cement to adhere your crayons to the paper so the crayons will come off easily and cleanly.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Homemade Playdough Valentine’s Day Kid’s Craft

Our Valentine’s Day kid’s craft was inspired (indirectly) by my daughter’s preschool. Instead of buying Play-Doh, every month one of the parents is assigned to make homemade playdough for the classroom. January was my month, and I knew that as soon as we made it K would want to play with it. Instead of letting her play with the classroom playdough, I decided we would make a second batch just for us. Then I got to thinking about how I could make it even more fun…

Since my mother leaves her Christmas tree up through February (she takes down all of the Christmas ornaments and replaces them with hearts for Valentine’s Day), I decided K should make ornaments for Mimi. Of course, once we got going K decided she should make ornaments for everyone on her list. (Dear friends and family, if you are reading this, please act surprised when K presents her goodies!)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup water
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2 tsp cream of tartar

Optional – food coloring or glitter.

Add all liquids to a sauce pan. Next add the dry ingredients and stir until smooth. Over medium heat continue stirring until the mixture pulls away from the sides and becomes clumpy. Remove from heat and continue to stir. At this point you will be able to pick up balls of playdough. Store in plastic container.

K was fascinated by the whole process, and loved helping to mix the ingredients. For our playdough, I decided to add red glitter. Unfortunately, I don’t remember how much I added. I just kept adding to the dry ingredients until it looked like it was mixed throughout. In hindsight, less is more on the glitter. It continues to come out of the playdough as you play with it, so we had red glitter everywhere. But it was fun.

Next we busted out the cookie cutters and got to work making our ornaments. (Don’t forget to put a whole in your shapes if you are making ornaments, we used a straw.) The hearts took several days to dry thoroughly, flipping them daily to dry both sides.

If you don’t want to mess with glitter or food coloring, another idea is to use markers to color the shapes once they are dry.

This is a quick, easy and cheap project for kids. The only downside is the drying time.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Of course, we had to pay tribute to The Mouse too…

Note: If you just want to “play” with your playdough, store in an air-tight container between uses. (That’s what they do in my daughter’s class.) Plus since it is so cheap to make, when it starts to dry out just toss the old and make a new batch.

Christmas Veggie Tree

Need the perfect appetizer for your holiday party? Here it is! This Christmas Veggie Tree is sure to be a hit at any holiday affair. The only problem is that it is so pretty, people will be afraid to eat it!

This project is SO easy, but it does take a LOT of broccoli! I purchased three packs with three heads each, and I had to send my husband back out for another package. Even then, I ended up cutting off the last inch of the styrofoam because I was totally out of veggies.

Materials -

• Styrofoam cone
• Aluminum foil
• Toothpicks
• Broccoli (12 + heads)
• Carrots (full package of baby carrots)
• Tomatoes (full package of cherry tomatoes)
• (Any other veggie you want to use)

First wrap your cone in foil, then starting at the bottom stick your veggies on the tree with toothpicks. It really is that simple, but I do have a few tips that I learned from experience.

Tips -

• Chop all of your broccoli first and use the big pieces at the bottom saving the smaller pieces for the top to help balance the look of your tree.
• I placed the veggie “ornaments” as I went, but then I ended up filling in at the end too.
• Yes, I used toothpicks on every piece of broccoli and tomatoes, but the carrots I just squished in. Although the top few carrots needed toothpicks to stay in place too.
• Stick the toothpick in the broccoli then stick the broccoli in the cone. But for tomatoes, stick the toothpick on the cone, then slide on your tomato (otherwise you are likely to squish your tomato).
• Don’t be afraid to chop off the top of the cone if you run out of veggies

Thank you to my inspiration, that I found on Pintrest.

4 Kid-Friendly Thanksgiving Crafts

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, we sat down to make some easy, kid-friendly crafts for the holiday. We made all four of these crafts in about an hour, with things I already had in our craft supplies.

First up, the toilet-paper-roll Turkey (yeay upcycling!). I wish I had Googly eyes to add, but I didn’t t have any in my stash. He turned out cute without them, but I might still add them later. Note, those are the hands of my 3 year old, it would be cute to make this with hands from the whole family. I debated how to attach them and ended up deciding staples would hold up better over time.

Since the toilet-paper-roll Turkey turned out to be a very mommy centered craft (I traced her hands, and then did all of the assembly myself). K colored this simple hand-print craft while I assembled the Turkey. Great craft to keep little ones busy. If I did this again, I would make photocopies of her traced hands and let her color hand-print masterpieces for everyone.

We recently got some finger paints that K has been dying to test out, so we painted her hand and voila. This craft turned out so cute, I wish it was on something nicer for display, like a mini stretched canvas. (Note to self for next time.)

Finally, we had to make the princess a Thanksgiving crown. Since K is just learning to use scissors and wants to use them every chance she gets, this was her favorite craft to make. I cut out the feathers (totally just eyeballed the shape), and then I let her snip the edges to fringe the feathers. She can’t wait to show off her crown at Thanksgiving!

Hope you enjoy our crafts, Happy Thanksgiving!

DIY 30th, 40th or 50th Birthday Gift

My good friend, who shall remain nameless, recently reached the 40th birthday milestone. (Happy Birthday friend.) To celebrate, I wanted to do something fun for her to make her laugh. I saw something similar to this online a while ago, and I filed it away in my cluttered brain. Somehow I remembered it, and I knew it would make her laugh.

This was super easy to create. While I didn’t take any pictures of the process, here’s how you can make your own.

Supplies:

• Sturdy cardboard box. (I upcycled a box that a baby gift came in, but you can use any box.)
• Pretty paper
• Modge Podge & small foam brush
• Foam block (available in craft store near floral arrangements)
• Shredded paper
• Vinyl (or letter stickers)
• Lollipops (You can use any pops you want, but we love Yummy Earth Organic Lollipops and I know she keeps organic so I choose these. If you use Blow Pops, you could change the text to 40 “Blows”)
• Small tag with ribbon

Step 1 – Unless you have a pretty box, you will want to cover your box with the pretty paper. If you haven’t worked with Modge Podge before, it is great and can be used for everything. You will want to apply it with a small spunge brush (available at craft stores). Apply a coat of Modge Podge to your box, and then lay the paper on top. Next cover the paper in another coat of Modge Podge. This will give you a nice finished look.

Step 2 – While your Modge Podge is drying (preferably overnight), go ahead and make a tag. I wanted to soften the 40 “sucks” with something friendly, so at the last minute I made the oh-so-simple tag for my gift “But You Make it Fabulous.” When I make this again, I will do something a little nicer, maybe something printed – I hate my handwriting. But you can make this as simple or complicated as you like.

Step 3 – After the Modge Podge is dry, apply your letters. I used my Cricut to cut the letters out of vinyl (because I LOVE vinyl), but if you don’t have one, you can just use letter stickers.

Step 4 – Place foam block in your box and place your lollipops. After the lollipops are placed, fill in with shredded paper for some color.

Step 5 – Attach your tag, and you are good to go.

See, simple