Homemade Crayon Valentines

In keeping with Emma's latest "art craze", we decided to make homemade crayons for her Valentines this year.  I shopped all over town for a mini heart shaped muffin tin, but couldn't find one.  It bothered me more than a little bit that my valentine crayons were going to be round, but I'm over it.

And I'm proud of my thrifty self for using a pan I already had.  Even if it was round and boring.

Step one:  Peel old crayons.  Or, peel new, pointy crayons if you're like me and throw them away once they break or lose their point.

(I have never tried to hide my OCD tendencies from the craft world.)

Keep peeling, and breaking.....

....until you have happy piles of color all over the kitchen.

Drop them into muffin tins, paying CLOSE attention to how the colors are distributed, and making sure the same number from each color pile gets deposited into every tin.

If you FORGET to spray the tins, empty them out, spray them, then refill them, paying no attention whatsoever to which colors land where.

Not that you would forget.

Or be bothered by the fact that some tins will now have more blue than red in them.

Life is short.  No worries.

Bake at 250 until melted.  Keep a close eye.  Mine took about 10 minutes.

I put them on a cookie sheet in case they dripped.

They didn't.

I opened all the windows in case my non-toxic crayons suddenly turned toxic.

They didn't.

I did use old tins though.....I wouldn't recommend using tins that you want to reuse for food purposes.

Anyway, once completely cooled we popped ours into the freezer for about three minutes to release them from the tins.

They're cute!

And round!

And FUN!!

I found white cardboard hearts at the craft store for a dollar.  I hot glued rainbow ribbon to the backs of them to make a hanger for each heart.  Then, we printed little tags that said

Valentine, you  COLOR my world!

and attached them to each heart.  We made one for each kid in Emma's class.

Then we set to work on our other Valentine's homework.......decorating a Valentine box.

Yes, for those of you keeping track, this IS INDEED the SECOND box I have decorated for preschool in the past several days.  We're on a roll here, cranking out decorated boxes as if there is no laundry to be done.  ;-)

I decided to be all hip and cool and turn this box into a big event, so I splurged.  Sugar cereal this week!  I try not to do that too often.

Buzzard suggested we decorate our box to look like a box of conversation hearts.  I thought that was a super cute idea, and if I don't go ahead and implement one of his craft suggestions soon he is going to lose interest in me and stop offering his abundance of creative directives.

But.

Emma and I browsed Pinterest and she fell in love with this for inspiration....

I happened to have a roll of red crepe paper already, so we wrapped our box in pink wrapping paper and then set to work making crepe paper ruffles and cupcake liner eyeballs.

Emma loves nothing more than a really involved project.

I think the paper she chose for the wings and ears makes him look a tad devil-ish.

But okay.  He's a love owl.  And this little devil shall deliver homemade crayons to preschoolers on Thursday.  And I do believe this concludes my box decorating duties.  :-)