Valentine’s Day Sun Catchers: Kids Craft

Yesterday was the last day of winter break for my Kindergartener, so to celebrate we decided to get crafty for Valentine’s Day. I love the way our sun catchers turned out so much, they may stay up long after Valentine’s Day. After all, what’s a playroom without a few handmade hearts?

This is a super simple craft to create using things you probably already have on hand. I did learn a few things making ours, so make sure you take note of my tips so yours turn out perfect the first time. It is also super quick, so you can make a lot of these in a short time with only a few crayons. 

Materials:

• Old Crayons
• Wax Paper
• Parchment or Kraft Paper
• Manual Sharpener or Knife
• Iron

What I love about this craft is that it is an excellent way to upcycle old, broken crayons. And since I recently cleaned out the junky restaurant crayons from my girls’ restaurant backpack, we had plenty to work with. We also like to make recycled crayons from old crayons, but this time I wanted to do something different.

After removing any paper from the crayons. Sharpen crayons with a manual sharpener. Since we were using old broken crayons, while my daughter sharpened the crayons she could, I used a knife to chop up smaller bits. 

TIP – The first one I made I used a LOT of shavings, like 5-6 crayons worth. That’s overkill. You only need one crayon for each piece of wax paper. Otherwise, it is too thick and you will lose the translucent sun catcher effect.

For the first few sun catchers we made, we mixed colors. But we discovered that when the colors melted, they became one dark shade of red. So we decided we liked the look of a single color best. 

Once you have you shavings, place them on a piece of wax paper – approx 12 x 12 inches. Fold the wax paper in half and then double fold the edges to create an envelope that will contain the shavings. This is very important. Make sure you double fold over your edges or wax will run out when you iron. 

Using a low setting, place your wax paper envelope between a large piece of folded parchment or kraft paper. Wax will ooze out — do not skip the parchment or kraft paper. (At first I tried using a rag as a drop cloth, but it got messy. The parchment works well because it contains the melted crayon.)

As you iron, let the melted crayon run in the wax paper envelope filling it with color.

When the melted crayon is more or less evenly distributed, set it aside to cool (just a couple of minutes).

Once cool, use a pencil to draw large hearts on the wax paper envelopes, and then cut out hearts. (I was surprised how easy it is to cut the wax paper with melted crayon inside.) Initially I was going to trace prefect hearts, but I decided to free hand them and let my daughter cut them out.

Punch a hole in your hearts and hang in the window.

Super pretty, right?