I have to be honest here and admit that I was ridiculously excited about making Valentines for Kate. Like, for serious. I decided to make the heart crayons that are all over Pinterest right now. (Should I just rename my blog “The Pinterest Show”? I feel like I used to have original ideas. lol.)
First step is to cut up the crayons. Incidentally, I *may* have ruined our plastic cutting board cutting up the crayons. I’m going to go ahead and suggest that you not do that. Maybe put down some waxed paper first? Then put your crayons in a silicon heart mold. I got mine at Ikea for cheap which is good because, once you use it for crayons, you can’t use it for anything else.
I went with 2 colors in each mold. Kate liked to mix the colors up more and, in the end, I think her’s looked cooler. Regardless, it required about 2 crayon’s worth of wax for each heart.
So it turns out that I waaaay underestimated the number of crayons I would need. Particularly since, in addition to our playgroup party, we ended up going to a Valentine’s Day party at the library which required us to bring 24 valentines. I may have used all but one of my child’s crayons up in this little endeavor. It’s cool. She and I both love brand new crayons. OK, maybe I’m projecting a little 🙂
You “cook” it at 230* for 15 minutes. Well, if you have a normal oven you do. With my oven, you check them at 15 minutes and then cook them for another 15. This is probably super obvious to everyone who isn’t me, but you should put the mold on a cookie sheet before you put in it the oven. Just trust me on this one. Let them cool for an hour or two and then pop them out. Basically, you want them to set up but if you wait too long (say overnight) they fall apart as you pop them out. Ask me how I know this. Grr… No worries though, just pop them back in the oven and they remelt.
Now on to the paper portion of our Valentines. My super awesome hubby got me a Cricut and SCAL for Christmas a few years ago. For those of you living in a cave (hi mom!) a Cricut is a computerized die cutting machine. SCAL is a piece of software that allows you to hook your Cricut up to your computer thus circumventing the need to buy cartridges. I <3 it. I cut out some 36 just-shy-of 3 inch scalloped circles.
I stamped, “You color my world Love Kate” on them. (That’s another Pinterest rip off by the way.) Now, I’m not a big stamper, but I think they turned out ok. I had to stamp it 3 times because I didn’t have enough of each letter to spell out everything, but it was fairly easy to line it up using the acrylic block. Not to mention, they’re 2 year olds y’all. How critical can they be?
Hmm… The plan was to put the crayon in the center, but even so I think it needs a little something.
I’m always a fan of bling. Especially heart shaped bling. 
Maybe a little ink around the edges?
Ah ha! A gray mat and we’re in business. By the way, this is one of the crayons that Kate made and it’s totally my fav. I <3 rainbows.
I stuck some Echo Park paper on the back and called it good.
I can’t wait for her to give them to her little friends at our party today! 🙂