Melted Crayon Christmas Ornaments - Easy Holiday DIY To Do With Kids

 

 

Another of our Christmas crafts for this year and I have to say I am THRILLED with this one. It came out exactly like I wanted. They were not hard, but they were more time consuming than I expected.

 

Here's the inspiration page for the melted crayon ornaments. Supplies required for this craft are:

-broken crayons

-clear glass ornaments (I used iridescent ones)

-oven mitt or heat glove (I used the heat glove that came with my curling wand)

 

 

These are the ornaments I used. You can see on the box they were $8.99 a dozen but they were half off when I got them. I was trying to decide between clear and iridescent. I ended up getting the iridescent and I'm happy with that choice. The colors don't show up quite as clearly, but it's also pretty forgiving of mistakes and it just looks so pretty.

 

The beginning of the process is pretty simple - unwrap and break a bunch of crayons. My daughter was really into that part. She was a little upset at first that I was breaking her crayons, but she got over it quickly and snapped her Crayolas with gusto. We did use Crayola crayons, as recommended in the link. They say they melt the best. I haven't used anything else, so I can't compare, but the Crayolas worked perfectly well. (My spellcheck doesn't like Crayolas, but how else are you supposed to pluralize Crayola? I'm just sticking with it.)

 

In the link they used kind of big chucks of Crayolas and then tipped them out of the ornaments when they were done with them. I tried that, but it didn't work for me. The pieces either got stuck on the inside or sometimes they half dripped out. I ended up smashing them really small by putting them in a freezer bag and hitting them with a mallet.

 

My daughter picked out the pieces to go inside - I let her pick 2 to 4, depending on their size - and I melted them. The melting took longer than I expected and my child was getting bored with the waiting in true 3-year-old form. So I let her put pieces in all the ornaments and then I melted them all while she played.

 

After the pieces were in, I melted them with my hair dryer and rolled them around until the inside of the ornament was pretty well covered. I figured out what worked best for me was holding the hair dryer in one spot right on the crayon pieces until they were a bit soft, and then slowly turning the ornament, keeping the hair dryer on the pieces. This part should definitely be done by adults. The ornaments get HOT. I very strongly recommend you use an oven mitt or something. After it's all melted just pop the top back on and do the next one. Easy peasy!

 My 3-year-old is not well versed in color theory, so some of her choices were strange. I have to say the orange, purple & gray one is not my favorite. But even the strangely colored ones look neat. The ornaments look so nice, it would even be a good grown-up diy. You could color coordinate them to match your décor and have pretty, unique, inexpensive marbled ornaments. All in all love, love, LOVE these!

See? So pretty!

 

Give these a try! I'd love for you to share pics and tips on our facebook page. And if your in the NWA area, don't forget to check out the calendar for all the local holiday events!

 

Cinnamon Salt Dough Ornaments - Easy, Kid-Friendly DIY Christmas Craft

 

I posted a few days ago about some Christmas crafts I want to do with my preschooler this year. We've since been derailed by a terrible cold that has struck my entire family and just refuses to go away. We have managed to do a couple of the simple ones anyway. Hey, as long as we're stuck in the house sneezing and sniffling, we might as well get some crafting done.

 

The first one I decided to tackle was the No Cook Cinnamon Ornaments. I used the website in the link as my inspiration. The recipe is basically salt dough with cinnamon added.

 

 

-1 cup flour

-1/2 cup salt

-1/2 cup cinnamon (I actually didn't have enough so I used about 3/8 cup cinnamon and 3/8 cup nutmeg)

-3/4 c warm water

 

You just mix that all together. I mixed the dry ingredients first, then added the water and stirred until I got tired of stirring and then finished mixing with my hands. It's pretty sticky and messy at first, but it turns into dough pretty quickly.

 

Once it was well mixed, I broke out the cookie cutters and brought in my daughter. I rolled the dough out onto the table (actually I rolled the dough out onto a cutting sheet because my table is tiled) and I let my daughter pick cookie cutters and push them down into the dough.

Please excuse the blurry pic - I was working with a hyper, wiggly 3-year-old. What we do with cookie cutters is push them all into the dough, then pull them all out and remove the cut out pieces.

I removed the cut out pieces and put them on wax paper, then kneaded the remainder of the dough back into a ball, rolled it out again and let her cut more.  Repeat until you're out of dough. If you're going to be using them as ornaments, remember to put a hole for stringing. I used a toothpick and pushed it though to the widest part, then turned the ornament over and did it again through the same hole but in the other direction. If you only do it one way and not the other, the hole can be kind of closed off on one side. Doing it both ways makes it cleaner.

The inspiration website says they take 24 hours to dry. Ours took a lot closer to a week! Granted, my house is pretty humid but these things were nowhere near dry after 24 hours. Be sure you have a place to set them for a few days.

After they're dry, you can paint them or coat them in mod podge, but I decided to leave ours au natural. They smell cinnamon-and-nutmeg-y, but only when your within about a foot of the tree, so it's not overwhelming. Also, mine are a bit fragile. I think I rolled them out too thin. They should probably be at least a whole 1/4 inch thick.

Overall, I really love them. They are so pretty and rustic.

 

I love the little reindeer. My daughter's favorites are the snowmen and the "socks," otherwise known as stockings. She was so proud to hang them on the tree and tell everyone she made them.

 

If you try these, let me know how it goes! Especially if you have any tips to share. I'd also love to see your pics, here or on our Facebook page. Looking forward to the rest of our Christmas crafting!