Crafting

I am not a terribly creative person...the crafts I do with the kids all come from lots of online research as I try to find things that meet certain criteria:

1) It's gotta be a craft that's easy enough for Lizzie to do but challenging enough for Matthew to stay interested;

2) I don't want to have to buy a bunch of stuff that will have a lot of leftovers that we'll never use again. The craft idea rates much more highly if the 'ingredients' are simple;

3) It's something that I can envision myself being able to make along with the kids;

and

4) The finished product looks pretty good...according to the kids.

All of that being said, the boys have been asking me if we can do more craft-related activities.  So, with Valentine's Day in mind, I began researching crafty stuff a few weeks ago.  In the week leading up to Valentine's, we did several activities.  Sadly I took pictures of only one of these activities: 'Stained Glass' Hearts.

We spent an entire afternoon making these simulated stained glass hearts:  grating crayons; ironing crayon bits between waxed paper sheets; creating frames out of black paper and sizing the crayon art to fit our frames; cleaning it all up. Eventually we hung them all up around the patio windows (which I also failed to take a picture of) and they looked pretty hanging there with light streaming through them.

(Incidentally, crayon bits are hard to get off of the kitchen table...I ended up putting an old towel on top of the worst of it and ironing the towel so that the crayon bits melted into the towel; I then washed the towel in hot water and got rid of the wax from the towel that way.)

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We made quite a mess, just peeling and grating the crayons

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The grated crayon.

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We put about a teaspoon of grated crayon between sheets of waxed paper and put newsprint on the top and bottom.  It took just a few seconds with the iron to melt the crayon bits into interesting patterns. Though the kids always wanted to put lots of crayon between the waxed paper, the eventual pictures that we liked the best were those with clear/white bits spread throughout the streaks of colour.

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We all enjoyed cups of chai tea on one afternoon of Valentine crafting...a special treat for the kids.

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A few of the finished product.