paint cut paste

happy earth week! i saw this sweet idea on the mackville road blog, and found it to be pretty ideal for my little gatherer and crayon lover. novi and i are no strangers to picking some leaves and flowers nor to melting some crayons between wax paper… this combined both!

once again, we spent the afternoon in the yard and novi gathered all sorts of leaves, petals, and flowers… even if that meant picking them from our flowerbed.

we collected them in the bottom tray from a flower pot. (it was handy.)

we gathered up some supplies, which include old crayons, a veggie peeler (to shave the crayons with,) some wax paper, an iron, and a towel.

after i shaved some of the crayons, novi arranged the flowers and other findings on the wax paper and sprinkled on the crayon shavings.

when we were finished arranging, it looked like this:

we put another piece of wax paper on top, then a dishtowel. i ironed it on the maximum setting, but nothing seemed to be happening. i’d recommend using a very thin towel or cloth napkin — or you can do what i did and risk ironing directly onto the top sheet of wax paper. (somehow this worked out okay…??!?) then voila — our spring collection preserved in a sun catching way!

when i was a little girl, i used to love melting down my old crayons into new and improved crayon shapes, so i thought this would be fun to do with novi this year. (for some reason, my childhood memories of melted wax involve styrofoam meat trays…??) we have a heart mini-muffin pan, which is fitting for the season. my ubercrafty friend over at pink and green mama did this with her daughter last year, as well, so i checked out her blog to learn about the oven settings.

all year, novi and i have saved up broken crayons and crayons from restaurants.

novi helped me to peel off the paper and break them into small chunks. (fyi: peeling cheap restaurant crayons is not the most fun task.)

we divvied the chunks up into the heart pan.

then we baked them at 250 degrees for about 15 minutes. i CAREFULLY had to carry the tray across the kitchen (minimal wax drippage onto new kitchen sisal rug. ick.) to the fridge where i set them to cool for about 15 minutes. to my surprise, they popped out of the tray very easily.

we put each one into a little valentine bag with a nametag on it and a note in it saying “i heART you” for all of novi’s friends. (hey, puns are okay for toddlers.)

though some of the baby siblings of novi’s friends, who are not yet in the crayon stage, got some felt hearts that i sewed for them instead.

put a little ART in your heART, valentine!

wax + colorful yarn = genius. me and the little lady are big fans of wikki stix. they’re a really cool modeling medium in string-like form that is endlessly reusable imagination ignition.

image from drawyourworld.com

i first purchased wikki stix with air travel in mind… what a great idea for something new and fun to do on a plane! then today we were in a local cafe that supplied wikki stix to kids (big thrills) and we saw firsthand what awesome companions wikkis can be in restaurants while waiting for meals to arrive.

for us, the sculpting fun can last for hours… with a lot of “mommy, can you make it into a duck?” pleading and a whole lot of novi sculpting on her own, too.

i’m not getting paid by wikki stix for this pseudo-endorsement. i just wanted to shed light on a non-conventional sculpting material that is super-portable, not at all messy, and can keep our small friends creatively entertained for hours. check out their web site to learn about all of wikki stix uses (artsy and household! i.e.; they help to open jars??)

skulpsherrrr

cuteness bonus: novi calls them her “sticky wicks…” and really, they seem like sticky candle wicks, so… why not?