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!
No comments:
Post a Comment