recycled crayon eggs

Hey all! I've got a little recycled crayon project redux for you.

A month back, I posted about the rupee crayon party favors we made for the kiddo's Zelda birthday party. Big success! But, I did have leftovers. Both leftover rupees, and some leftover old crayons. So I decided to take some of the leftovers and recycle them again, this time into a little treat for the kiddo's Easter basket. (Should we call it tri-cycling? Or re-recycling?)

Easter egg crayons are pretty simple to make, if you have one of these Jello egg molds. Mine is a few years old (so it looks different from the one I've linked to), and the eggs come out with a patterns instead of being smooth. And of course, you should plan on retiring your mold from food use after using it for crayon eggs. FYI.

The process is slightly different from making the rupee crayons, because that was an open mold, and this one is closed. I could still have pushed crayon bits into the hole, but it would have been harder to get the entire mold filled to the top.

So I improvised a double boiler for the microwave. You can see the glass jar in the background there.

I put the crayons (broken into pieces) into the jar, then placed the jar into a bowl of water about two inches deep. The whole thing went into the microwave. Note: I've had good success with this method and have never been injured, but microwaves can cause hot spots, fires and occasional water eruptions. Please proceed knowing these risks, and remember: the crayons might be for kids, but this project is not. (In fact, if you have a standard double boiler you can use exclusively for crafts or candles, I'd recommend that over the microwave method any day.)

Once the wax was melted completely, I carefully poured it from the jar into the molds (using a silicon hot mitt to hold the hot jar). After letting it cool for a couple of hours, the mold popped right open, and the crayon came right out.

You might need to babysit your project a little. Wax contracts a little as it cools, so you may need to fill in your mold a little more to prevent hollow spots.

Once the crayons are out of the mold, they'll have little stumps.

If you leave them intact, the eggs won't fit into an unmodified egg carton. Luckily, the stumps are easy to remove with a serrated knife and a gentle sawing motion. Then, you can smooth the cuts by rubbing on a hot piece of aluminum foil.

Done at last, you can package them in an egg carton and stick them in the Easter basket!

Like a lot of the projects I do, this one is very versatile. You can make crayon hearts for Valentine's Day (I've seen them all over Pinterest), crayon shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day. You can find a Lego figure mold and make party favors for a Lego party. Think outside the (crayon) box!

(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)


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bring ( trash - to - treasure hunt )

The kiddo and I took a little field trip today to BRING; they're calling it the Planet Improvement Center these days, a play on "Home Improvement Center", but we always just call it Bring. I think it used to be an acronym for Builders' Resource . . . I -- N -- G. I'm not sure. The website doesn't say. (UPDATE: a reader named Brett sent in a comment letting me know "BRING stands for: Begin Recycling In Neighborhood Groups. It harkens back to the days when we collected glass around town." Thanks, Brett!)

But it's a pretty cool place. Picture old lumber from deconstructed buildings, bins of shiny brass doorknobs, tile leftover from construction jobs, old furniture and tools and light fixtures, bits piled up from office building remodels. And tons of stuff you'd never imagine until you get there. Like this. This almost came home with me.

Ooh baby. Vintage turquoise gas range. But check out the scale.

It's only like 18 inches high. Best the mister and I can figure, it must have come out of an old RV or something. I can imagine gutting it and making the perfect play stove for the kiddo. But I left it behind . . . and can't stop thinking about it . . . but I don't have enough room for a play stove. I really need like, twice the house I've got; my ideas can't all fit in this one.

I also spied these wood bi-fold doors, just begging to be made into a privacy screen / room divider. Maybe painted some bright color?

Of course, these old chrome stools are kinda awesome as-is. Vintage cool.

I might go back for one of these. Surely I can find space for one of these.

And then, there were things like this large display case. It's one of a pair at Bring that came out of the Eugene Nike Store. They're doing a remodel in anticipation of the upcoming Olympic Trials, so . . . nifty display cases up for grabs.

AND these free shipping crates that I almost loaded up (telling myself that if someday I'm a prop mistress for an Indiana Jones movie, they'd be perfect . . . and if not, I could always use that industrial hardware for something cool).

Anyway, aside from some bits and pieces for finishing up a project (more on that later), I came away with these. These boring shutters. These boring old shutters that are not an adorable, miniature turquoise stove.

Well, I came away with two of them, anyway, to solve the problem of one of our two bedroom windows. We've been living with lime green curtains. They shall not be photographed. But I'll post the shutters when they're done.

What gets my imagination going out at Bring, really, is that it's not just piles of stuff with potential, it's the building and courtyard that really show what you can do with all this stuff.

Like this gate made completely of recycled bits of old bicycles and buildings. (Not sure where the rhino in the background came from, but I love him.)

Or this siding made out of old records (an old bridge railing in the foreground fills in as a fence for the little path that wanders through the garden).

Or this area of the courtyard that resembles a temple.

I think you'll agree, though, that this tile mosaic structure and wall really push the envelope.

Recycled toilet tank lids. That's pretty awesome.

Check it out sometime! Or, if you live out-of-area, lots of cities have re-building centers or Habitat for Humanity Re-Stores. It's a pretty limitless pool of possibility.


(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)

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happy easter !

(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)

toddler projects

We're burning through a lot of play dough lately. The store-bought kind gets dried out pretty fast, and the homemade kind has a tendency to go bad before it gets dried out, so I've been making a batch every couple of days. The kiddo loves to roll his little cars through it, making tracks and generally scabbing it up.

We also did a bunch of finger paintings this morning. There've been a lot more temper tantrums around here lately, and, sometimes, a lot more clinginess (all of which I've been chalking up to the whole "two-year-old" thing), but there are a few things that help his whole little self just relax: WALL-E, helping me use the KitchenAid mixer, and getting messy in some fingerpaint or sand.

Today, kiddo pointed to the colors he wanted (while trying to remember their names), and I squirted little bits onto the paper for him to smear around on the paper and his face and arms. I'm counting my lucky stars; Crayola invented washable finger paint before I had a kid.


the play dough recipe we've been using lately:

Whisk 3/4 cup white flour and 3/4 cup water in a bowl. Add 4 T. table salt, 1 T cream of tartar, and 2 T vegetable oil. Heat in sauce pan, stirring continuously. When the desired consistency is reached, remove from pan onto floured surface. Knead in one package of unsweetened lemon-ade Kool Aid mix (for scent). Divide into four equal balls. Knead a couple of drops of food coloring into each ball. Store in old play dough containers. Discard when it starts to smell "off".

(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)

tie-dye mania !

My sister-in-law always comes up with great birthday party ideas for my niece and nephew; my favorites are the ones that include a little project for everyone to do. A couple of times, we went to one of those paint-your-own-pottery studios; this year, she bought some white t-shirts and a couple of tie-dye kits (similar to this one, but larger, to dye more shirts). Awesome!

We all watched a short video that came with the kit, then went to town.

Here's how our three came out:

We ended up with a huge variety of shirts between the twenty-or-so of us at the party, and each one was beautiful and different.

Some tips for keeping things tidy:

1) Keep it outdoors if possible. Spilled dye is easier to clean up with a hose or the rain.

2) Cover your work surface with a water-proof cover if you care about your work surface staining.

3) Keep clean-up supplies close at hand. This might include paper towels if you use them, or reusable towels you're not concerned about staining.

4) Keep ziplock bags at the ready. Tie-dye needs to sit overnight; party guests can transport their shirts home for washing if they have the mess contained.

This is a pretty awesome party project for large or small groups, and people can spend as much or as little time on their shirts as they like. Thanks for inviting us, M!


(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)

the fanciest thing in my house

This is the fanciest thing in my house.

Similar projects have been all over Pinterest for awhile, based on a $300 West Elm version (which I've read is based on a $1500 version by designer Vernor Panton). And I really liked them.

Most of all, as usual, I like the idea of making something over with inexpensive materials. In my case, I spent $2 on an old lampshade, $2 on a spool of steel wire, and $1.50 on a roll of wax paper.

I wish I knew who to credit with the innovation of using an upside down lampshade, because I think it's pretty darn smart. I've seen similar versions made with hanging fruit baskets, Ikea picture frames, and wreath forms, but I don't know the evolution of this project (which came first, and who spun off their project from the original?).

Here are a couple of the inspiration pins for this project: this one from Design Sponge (made with a hanging planter basket, ribbon, and hot glue); this one, from Make House a Home (made with a lampshade and stitched strands); and this one, from A Happy Place Called Home (Ikea frame and jump rings).

I did what I usually do; I picked the elements I liked from different versions of the chandelier (the upside down lampshade, the wire instead of stitching) and filtered out the ideas I didn't like, or that I thought made the project too complicated or expensive. And then I added in some of my own spin.

But let's start at the beginning. With an ordinary boob light.

I blogged last summer about my guest room make-over, but though a bunch of things have been changed or modified since that last update, I hadn't touched the light fixture. In fact, I shot around it when I wrote that post. And then, in August, I saw a couple of faux capiz chandeliers on the Young House Love blog's Pinterest Challenge (see numbers 6 & 184). I did a little bit of research and turned up a bunch more versions (as mentioned and pinned above). Then I gathered my materials. In addition to a roll of wax paper and a spool of 20 gauge steel wire, I turned up a tapered lamp shade at the thrift store on a 50% off day (I paid $2 after discount).

Tear off all the fabric and add an extra row of wrapped wire, and you end up with this:

I ironed three layers of wax paper together to make the "shell" material. And to a couple of spots, I added a very, very few crayon shavings between the layers to make a very small amount of tie-in to the room colors. Rather than punch circles out of the waxed paper, I cut mine into varying sizes of rectangles. And rather than stitching the shells together, I punched holes in either end with a teensy hole punch and hooked trains of the pieces together with jump rings made from the steel wire.

(Making jump rings with wire and pliers is way cheaper than buying jump rings ready-made, but is also more time consuming. Plan your own project accordingly.)

As is my pattern, I got only partway through with one tier, and retired the chandelier to the closet for a little while, to get it off the table. And then I got sidetracked working on Halloween costumes, Christmas presents, hallway painting, and birthday party stuff.

Earlier this month, when I finally pulled it out of the closet and went to hang it up (because a partially-finished chandelier is harder to ignore when it's hanging right in your face), it looked like this:

I buckled down, and put in some good, solid blocks of time to getting it finished. It took approximately 72 chains of 5 shells for the top-most tier, 56 chains of 4 for the middle tier, and 48 chains of 3 for the bottom tier.

It took a bit of time. And when it was finished, it looked a little like this in the room (flash on, with Photoshop filters added).

Here's how it hangs from the ceiling, with two cup hooks (the chandelier is super-light, but I may add two additional cup hooks, just in case).

And here it is, done . . .

. . . glowing . . .

. . . and in daylight . . .

I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Have you made one of these yet? Isn't it amazing what you can do with paper?

Hey, you can link to your paper projects in the comments below. Thanks for dropping by!


Edited to add: The original UL-rated fixture is still in place, with low-wattage compact fluorescent bulbs. The wax paper structure sits a little below the ceiling, and a couple of inches away from the glass shade. Plus, it's in the guest room, which means the light's not on very often. We're pretty safe from any fire danger, but I'm definitely on the alert!


(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)


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I Am Momma Hear Me Roar blog