Open Ended Art ~ Yellow with Crayons

Emily's Crayon Sun Catchers

This weeks Open Ended Art theme is Yellow with crayons. We already made our own "new" crayons so I decided to continue using up our restaurant crayon leftovers to make these Melted Crayon Sun Catchers with Emily.

Emily helped me peel the label off of the crayons.

I grated them with a cheese grater and put them is separate glass bowls. I was originally using my plastic apple sauce container cups that I love using for Emily's art projects, however there was so much static electricity from grating the crayons that the shavings were sticking to the plastic way to much.

Emily sprinkled the grated crayons onto a piece of folded wax paper. I put a piece of white paper under it so she could see the design she was making better.

When she was finished with her design I folded the waxed paper over the top of it and covered the waxed paper with the piece of computer paper and then folded all of that into a dish towel. Finally I set my iron to the cotton setting and moved it over the towel.

** I definitely recommend using an old towel that you don't mind throwing away. My first attempt at this ended up with heating the iron way too high and letting it sit too long and the wax melted out onto my towel...oops!!

When we were finished I taped them to the sliding glass door in the kitchen to let the light through them. Emily was very impressed! I can't wait to try these again.

There is a little yellow left in the center!!

This one came out much better!

I did not let the iron sit as long and I checked it much sooner.

This project was a little bit messy, but it was totally worth it. Emily had fun making a design with the crayon shavings and was even more excited to see the finished product.

Star Crayons

A New Life For Old Crayons!!

We have a huge stash of crayons that Emily has received when we go out to eat at restaurants. I keep them in a container but never really need to use them because we have our own stash of nice new Crayola crayons (They are the only ones we buy!). When I was teaching first grade, one of our Earth Day projects was for the kids to bring in something they recycled. One little boy made crayons for each child in the class by melting down all his old broken ones. I loved this idea and decided to give it a try with Emily!

Emily helped me peel the labels off of the crayons.

We broke the crayons into smaller pieces and filled our star muffin tin.

They are all ready to go into the oven.

I baked them at 225 degrees for about 15 minutes. I kept checking on them and took them out when they were all melted. After I took them out we had to wait patiently for them to cool off. I think we waited for about 2 hours. Then I popped them out of the mold and they were all read to use!

Our finished crayon stars!

Emily enjoyed testing out her "New" crayons.