V-day project

 Pinterest has literally changed my life. I didn't even know I could be creative before I discovered this AMAZING website. So, naturally, when trying to decide what kind of valentines to do for Isaac's class, I turned there. One popular pin was a crayon heart valentine. It wasn't my favorite, but it looked to be the easiest and cost efficient. Honestly, before this year, I had never even seen someone make homemade valentines. Let's just say I had no idea what I was getting myself into. This did take some time (about 5 hours), but we had to make 25 of them. Anyway, this is how it's done:
We used both Crayola and Cra-Z-Art brands. The Cra-Z-Art crayons are much easier to peel. For 25 valentines, it took about 100 crayons. (It's even more convinient when you already have a bunch of broken and peeled pieces courtesy of your toddler.) Then, I took a pen and ran it up the side of the crayon to remove the paper more easily.

Peel and cut the crayons into little pieces and place them in a heart-shaped cupcake pan. (I got mine at Walmart for about $3.50)





Set the oven to 250 F and bake for 10-15 minutes.

They come out looking slightly disappointing, but look much better when you take them out, which you do in about 10 minutes after they have set to room temperature. This is what ours turned out like:

Pretty cool,eh



 Next, choose two colors of construction paper. We used blue and red. Choose one to go behind the other, which means that it must be slightly bigger. Find a cup that fits around the heart with some room. My husband's coffee cup is about 4" in diameter and worked perfectly. Trace around the cup and cut out the circles.

 

Do the same thing for the larger circles with another cup on the other color construction paper. I used my kids' applesauce bowl. It is about 4 1/2" in diameter.

Then, have your child write their "to and from" on the backs of the larger circles.

Meanwhile, write on the smaller circles what you want the valentine to say. Ours said "Happy Valentine's Day for "crayon" out loud"

Then glue the circles together and tape the crayon heart to the middle. (There might be a better way to secure them to the construction paper, if you find it, let me know). Then you have homemade valentines!

Note: I would totally give credit to whoever came up with this genius idea, but the link I found was only a picture, which is why I posted this step by step tutorial. Although it was very time consuming, Isaac and I had a lot of fun doing it together.