Colorful Crayon Foliage

Beautiful Fall leaves are the inspiration for this fun and easy kid project. These would make great table decorations or place cards for your Thanksgiving dinner this week. 

All you need is a colorful collection of crayons, waxed paper, paper towels, scissors, and iron and ironing board.  The colors shown in these photos are perfect for Autumn, but this is a great project for any season.  It's also a great way to use up broken or scrap crayons that are too small to comfortably hold in your hand and usually end up in the garbage or getting sucked into the vacuum cleaner.

First, using a crayon sharpener or cheese grater,  make crayon shavings in a variety of colors.

Kids love this part of the project, because they're usually obsessed with sharpening things and this is a great excuse to do LOTS of it...and end up with a very satisfying pile of colorful shavings.

On your ironing board, place one sheet of waxed paper and distribute your crayon shavings over the top.  Place another sheet of waxed paper on top of that, followed by a piece of paper towel (so that the wax from the paper doesn't melt onto your iron).  Iron the waxed paper and crayon shavings on low heat until they are all melted.

At this point, you could cut leaf shapes freehand, or you could use an actual leaf as a template to cut out your colorful waxed paper.

See!  Beautiful!  

Have a great Thanksgiving!

All images courtesy of Britt McCombs

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