How To: Crayon Valentines

I take great joy in crafting gifts for my students in my kindergarten class. Every Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter, and end of the year I get my students something special. Sometimes I use digital scrapbooking elements to make treat toppers and fill the bags with goodies. Other times I give my students a book. I've even made bookmarks. Those were fun, and I'll share a tutorial later.

This Valentine's Day I decided to make a unique card using crayons. Using silicone molds and an ordinary box of crayons, I created my own heart crayons which I adhered to a handmade valentine card. CUTE!

These were relatively easy to make. You'll need the following items:

• Silicone cupcake molds - I used some mini-heart shape molds for this particular project. The card size is rather small (2x3), so the mini size worked best. I got mine in the valentine section at Wal-Mart. I know that Target also had some. Of course, you are not limited to heart shapes. But since it was a valentine card, I decided to go with the theme. There are some tin heart molds out there, and feel free to use them. However, silicone molds are very easy to use, and the crayon pops out. I really love them!
• Crayons - I used almost an entire box of 64 crayons on this project (24 mini-hearts total). I also used an assortment of colors.
• Cardstock
• Colorful valentine image (See below for a link to download)
• Glue dots - preferably 3-D glue dots; you will use 2 per valentine card
• Foil
• Oven or toaster oven

Preheat your oven to 275 degrees. In the meantime, remove the paper from your crayons and break into small pieces. Wrap a baking tray in foil (to protect your tray and oven). Place the pieces of crayon in the silicone molds. (Yeah, sort of forgot to take a pic of this part!)

I filled the molds about 3/4 of the way full, but you can fill them to the top if you like. As mentioned earlier, I made 24 valentines and used almost the entire box of 64 crayons. I could have filled the molds higher, but I found that 3/4 full made it easier to get the molds in and out of my toaster oven. (Those of you familiar with my oven understand why I chose to make these in the toaster oven instead of the actual oven.) Don't be cheap, though. Fill those babies, otherwise your homemade crayon will be tiny and fragile.

Put the tray of molds in the oven for ??? Oh gee whilackers (how in the world do you spell that?), I forgot how long. I will figure that one out and post it. In the meantime, if you try this before I post the actual time, just eyeball it. 15-20 minutes, I think. If it's completely melted (aka in liquid state) then it's good. If there are lumps of crayon, keep on baking. The longer you bake the crayons, the more the colors will mesh together. So, to get that great marbled effect, bake them until just melted.

Okay, so they aren't the most appetizing looking things. Hey, you aren't eating them, so who cares? (Oh, this reminds me, don't use these molds for any edible baking projects. Unless you like crayon and wax in your food. In that case, be my guest.) There will be a lot of wax/oil at the top of the heart, but don't be alarmed. And, because of this, it is harder to see your crayon colors, but trust me - they are there. Let the molds cool for 1 hour (2 hours if using a larger size). Then, pop those suckers out and enjoy their cuteness!

Wait, you aren't done yet! You need to get these babies on some cards. This is so easy, it just makes you want to slap your momma. Okay, not really. Seriously, who came up with that saying?

I wanted to card to be simple (and use less of my ink) but get the picture across that these are crayons. So, I created a cute image using Photoshop. And, you can download it and use it, too. I saved it in .jpeg format, so any photo software (including the basic one already installed on your computer) will open and print it. To save the image, click on it to open the full-size version. If you are a PC, right click, then select "save image as," and then proceed to save it somewhere that you will find it. If you are a Mac, then you probably are computer literate and know how to save images to your computer. (No offense, PCs.)

There are two versions. One has a "to" and "from" so you or your child can fill that out. The other has only a "from" for those of us who are in classrooms where you are asked to leave off children's names. Trust me, there's a reason why. Can you imagine trying to help 25 children find 24 other children's individual valentine goody bags or boxes? Madness, sheer madness. Leaving off the name of the recipient is much easier because the child can then drop and go, from bag to bag. I digress, here are the images.

After you have downloaded the card and cut them out, adhere two 3-D glue dots (one on top of the other) to the center of the white space in the card. The reason you will need two is because the crayons often are a little bit higher on the edges, creating a slight dip towards the center. So, unless you want to spend hours sanding your crayons down, go ahead and use two dots.

Here you can see that I have placed two glue dots on my card. I use 3-D dots because they are thicker. Also, you can see a crayon heart lying face down. What you see is the wax that rose to the top during baking. Once I flip the heart over, you will see all the heart in its marbled glory. Place the heart on the glue dots.

How awesome is that? You can have lots of fun playing with different color combinations!