How To: Colorful Heart Crayons

Here's a cute, fast and easy Valentine's Day project for you to do with the kids this weekend.  These would make great classmate Valentine's gifts for all of the school parties that will be happening on Tuesday, or just a fun little somethin' for your own kids to use in honor of the upcoming holiday.

Start with a colorful collection of crayons.  The ones shown here are new, but broken bits work great.  It's actually a wonderful way to get more life out of them once they've been rejected by the kids for being too small to hold.  It's totally fine to use and mix different brands of crayons as well.  Be aware that they may well have different melting points though.  The higher the paraffin content, the faster they will melt.

Remove all of the paper wrappers and break or cut the crayons into small pieces.  Do not grate them, since this would make the colors blend together too much and the end product would not look as vibrant or impressive.  

Place the crayon pieces in shaped silicone ice cube trays.  I have a huge collection of them in many different shapes which I use for hand soap molds. These heart shapes are perfect for Valentine's Day.  Ikea, Target, Goodwill and Value Village are great sources for silicone molds, by the way.

Place the crayon pieces in the molds.  It's OK to overfill them a bit, since the crayons will melt and pool downward into the mold.  It looks nice to choose just two or three color families for each heart.

Put the silicone molds on a baking tray and place them in the oven at 230 degrees for around 15 minutes until all of the crayons have melted.

Let them cool, then pop them out of the molds.

Cute and great for chubby little hands!  They're really fun to color with because they make beautiful swirling effects as each of the blended shades makes its own unique mark on the paper...just like your Valentine makes a unique mark on your world.  Sorry, I couldn't resist the sappy comparison.  

Happy Valentine's Day!

All photos courtesy of Britt McCombs.