this process is great for relaxation and stress relief, as the crayons just move so freely and softly across the warming tray as they are melting… it is soooo addictive – (really, i’m warning you!) i recently bought a warming tray just for this purpose, but i got the cheapest one i could find and it does not have a setting for low or high heat. it’s always running on a pretty hot temperature, thus novi can’t do this activity with me just yet. i wanted to post it for those of you with children who would be able to understand safety around using a warming tray – use your judgement about your own child, and always supervise children around a warming tray.

there are a couple of ways to engage in this activity. over the years, i’ve found that finger painting paper is my favorite paper to use because of its glossy quality, though other papers work just fine. metallic crayons are fabulous for this exercise, but any old crayons will do. here i used non-metallics primarily, with some silver and gold in there.

you can lay the paper directly onto a warming tray on low heat, and draw on it right there with peeled crayons. it’s luscious.

another thing you can do is line the tray with foil (when cool, before you turn it on) and draw on the foil. then do some print-making my pressing papers onto the design you’ve created.

i dragged this paper through the image on the foil for a smeared effect

the process is highly satisfying and results are always stunning with either method.

if you use the finger painting paper, the light shines through these so beautifully…

hopefully this sparks some ideas for you suncatcher and lantern makers out there

i made a few cards from some of the prints.

these really do make great sun-catchers… i made this butterfly as a gift for novi, since she’s quite obsessed with chasing butterflies around our backyard (and has seriously almost gone through our screen door a few times in pursuit of the elusive yellow-swallowtail.)

simple butterfly made by filling a black construction paper cut-out with the pretty paper

then an art therapist friend gave me a few of these huuuuge coffee filters. so one rainy day, we colored all over one of them with markers, like we’ve done before to make coffee filter flowers.

then we set it outside in the rain. (we kept ours out there too long -while we went to ballet class- and most of the color washed away. usually you can just remove it from the rain after about 5 minutes of getting soaked.)

once it was dry, novi wanted to wear it.

then we gathered it in the center, paperclipped it, and attached some twisted pipe cleaners to the center for the butterfly’s body. now novi’s playhouse (<– stay tuned) has a large lepidoptera friend in the window, catching the light.

you don’t have to go big to do this — regular, human-sized coffee filters will do.

first, let your child’s imagination run wild in coloring all over the coffee filters with the markers. if it is raining when you do this – you know those spring showers can be an artistic blessing – then put the colored (with a water-based marker) filters onto a cookie sheet outside for a minute to let the colors bleed, then dry them out before proceeding. you can see that effect from when we made coffee filter flowers last year. even if it’s not raining, the butterflies can be lovely. just let your child color away until his or her heart is content.

then bend a pipe cleaner (or half of one, actually) into an antenna shape. crinkle your coffee filter in the center and clip that into the clothespin along with the pipe cleaner. and there you have your winged springtime friend…

flutterby - ours got a bit wrinkled, but you get the idea

they make this cool bath crayon set with a cute ducky sponge just for this very thing – drawing in the tub! tonight when i busted out this surprise crayon set for novi, she was astonished. “what? you mean i can draw in my bathtub????!!!!? like, even on the wall?!?!” after explaining that it is ONLY with these crayons, and ONLY on the bath tub, my little artist went to work!

give the girl a crayon, she’ll tag something. seriously, her name is everywhere! sweetly, she likes to also write “mom”

and she drew a cute little yellow ducky in a blue pond, too…

but i think her favorite part was the yellow sponge duck who was her “artist’s assistant” and helped her clean all of her marks off the walls.

(thank you, ducky.)

it helped her to have a concept like “things that are in the sky” to draw, and then to paint a blue sky around that. novi chose to draw a tree and a sunshine with crayon, and then paint the sky blue.

other ideas could be to have your child draw “things in the grass” like flowers and bugs, etc, and paint the grass around it. or “things in the ocean” and paint the water around it, etc. you get the idea. i realized that this sort of directive helps to make this art task come to life.

then we moved onto some other mixed-media crayon/watercolor pieces…

novi: "this is julie, and she has the sun on her face so it's yellow"