Rainbow Crayon Disaster

Peanut's crayons kept breaking, and we also left a couple out in the sun...which reminded me of this: rainbow crayon hearts.

So, I thought I'd give it a try.

It started out pretty well...

pretty crayon bits in silicone tray

I looked into the oven, and the meltedy bits looked so lovely and blended together.

And then I tried to take them OUT of the oven.  And with grace that only I can master, I tripped, and spilled swirly wax all over the place...'cause I'm awesome like that.

abstract art in my toaster oven

Then, in my infinite wisdom (while panicking about hot wax pouring all over the place), I set the tray on a wire rack.  Remember how the tray was made of silicone?  Did you know that silicone is NOT firm, and when hot, and full of hot wax, it can REALLY bend???  Well, it did...so, now I no longer have a useable silicone ice cube tray.

it's a little warped

But, alas, all was not lost, and I was actually able to salvage a few somewhat useable rainbow crayons...which will probably get left out in the sun to become yet another rainbow puddle (as seen above).

after all of this...peanut will probably just want to eat them anyway

The end.

"I'll Love You Forever" Craft

I grew up listening to the story "I Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch, and now I often read it to my daughter for her bedtime story, so I wanted to do something with it to hang in her room.

First, a picture of the final product (they will be hung after she wakes up from her nap!):

I like how they turned out, but it was a bit of a process getting here, as I will explain.

Here are the materials I started out with:

However, since I didn't like how the original product turned out, I found that I also needed a gold metallic pen, a hot glue gun, scrap fabric, and ribbon (no picture).

I got the canvas, paint, sponge brush, pen, and glue gun at the dollar store.  The letters were from Michael's. The fabric was from my closet, but originally from http://www.tonicliving.com/ - you can order a huge bag of fabric scraps for $2.50 (plus shipping).

Step One: paint the canvas in your base colour.  I did a solid colour (pink) for mine, but you could have fun with it and do a funky pattern! (no picture).  Leave it to dry.

Step Two: stick on letter stickers.

Step Three: Paint top colour over top using sponge brush (brown).  Leave to dry.

Step Four: Peel off letter stickers.  This is where the project got frustrating.  See, my stickers did NOT come off easily, and they left coloured bits of foam all over, as you can see in the "F" in the picture below.

At first, I was not impressed and almost junked the project.  But then I decided to try out my gold metallic pen as a border, and I thought it made it better.  I also found that I didn't like the canvas without a border (too boring), so I got out the big bag of scraps and my hot glue gun and made a border by folding the fabric and gluing it on.

Then I glued on some ribbon to hang the pictures by, and VOILA, it was finished!