Valentines Day Heart-Shaped Wax Crayons

I decided to do something a little different this year for Valentines Day gifts for the kids’ classmates, and surprisingly, it turned out to be one of those Pinterest ideas that DIDN’T end up in epic failure.  🙂 The finished product we made were heart-shaped wax crayons to for the kids to give to their friends in little Valentines Day baggies, and they positively loved the project.

So,  in case any of you parents need some last-minute inspiration for a project (and because my husband was away at the time, and wanted the blow-by-blow of the operation) I’ve documented what we did here.

What You’ll Need:

The two kids had about 25 friends & relatives that they needed to make Valentines for, and the materials listed here was just right for each kid to get 3-4 of the finished items.

You’ll need:

• Around 100 crayons, assorted colors.  (Preferably with a bunch of white crayons – I got two 64-count boxes for the project)
• Heart-shaped oven molds (you can get them at craft shops like Michael’s)
• Baggies for the Finished product

The first thing was getting all the baggies ready for the finished products, which my creative daughter insisted on individually illustrating for each of her friends.

We first took the crayons and chopped them up into little bits, and separated them by major color groupings (reds, blues, yellows, etc).

The kids then poured them into the heart molds.

Then, we put the mold into the oven – 250°F for about 10-12 minutes did the trick.

After putting the heart crayon mold into the oven, my son quite literally sat & watched them melt for 8 minutes straight, not taking his eyes off it for a second.

And then, after taking them out of the oven & letting them cool, we popped the crayons out of the mold and voila!  They came out great!   My daughter insisted on giving a few of them a test-drive, just – you know – to make sure they were still REAL CRAYONS after all.

But then the kids distributed the hearts into each of their friends’ baggies, and repeat 2 more times to get all of the crayon pieces used, and we were a wrap!

If there’s anything I’d change the next time doing this, would be to get more white crayons, as adding white crayons into the mix makes the finished project look more like a confection and less like a muddy mix of colors.   But even that didn’t stop my son from attempting to take a bite out of one, just to be SURE it wasn’t really candy.  🙂

But what a fun project it was, and only a few hours of time to get it all done.   And best of all, with the exception of loading & unloading from the oven, and the big-knife work to chop up the crayons, the kids ran every last part of it – making it really their communication and their create – which, after all, is what we’re trying to do with Valentine’s Day anyhow.