Valentine's Day!

Are any of you procrastinators like me?  If so, you are in luck!  If you have the supplies to make cute little crayons, I have cards for you!

Click the picture to download in Google Docs

If you don't have time to make cutsey crayons, you could even just rubber band together 3-4 crayons and give those with the cards.  I'm sure the kids will still love it!

I love making crayons and have done so plenty of times before: birthday parties, student gifts for Christmas or end of the year, even in the kid goody bags at my brother in law's wedding!

You can see a tutorial I did over on Classroom DIY.

Well, this time around, I wanted to try a different technique that have been all over Pinterest - using silicone ice trays in the oven.  You see, I usually melt the crayons in an old double boiler and pour them into candy or soap molds. I've even poured the liquid crayon into silicon molds before, and it worked great.

Making Crayons, Oven and Silicon Mold Technique 

1.  Gather supplies:

• Silicon ice cube molds (I have a heart one from Ikea)
• Crayons (I used super cheap ones I got for free at an educational conference)
• Cutting board
• Cookie sheet

 2.  Peel crayons and sort by color.

 3. Chop crayons into little pieces.  I actually could just break mine, since they were the cheap kind.  If you are using Crayola, you'll have to chop them.

4.   Place crayons inside the mold, mixing colors that you want.

5.  Put the mold on top of the cookie sheet and bake at 350 until you notice they are melted.  Crayons have a pretty low melting temp, so they don't need to be in there long.

6.   Cool, pop out of the mold and enjoy!!

All in all, I think I will actually stick with my original technique of meting in the double boiler.  For the second batch, I left them in the oven a bit too long, and the mold started to warp.  Also, my mold will not come clean, even after scrubbing several times.  I think a combo of being cooked together in the oven caused more stains.  It worked, but I won't be making crayons this way again.

Once all my crayons were made, I used cute patterned Washi tape to attach my crayons to the back of the cards.  Then I plopped them all in my students' Valentine's bags today.  Easy, peasy!  

What fun things do you give away for Valentine's Day?  I usually give away playdough, but I didn't get on the ball quick enough this year to get it ahead of time.  I'm liking these crayons though, I might need to start a new tradition!