crayon casting -- planes edition, part two

Hi again! As mentioned in my last post, I went off-label on this project. By which I mean that the package for the crayon mold explicitly states, "For Use with Melt'n Mold Factory Only".

Have you seen the Crayola Melt'n Mold Factory? It looks pretty cool. It's kind of like an Easy Bake Oven for crayons: there's a heating element that melts old crayons down to liquid wax and guides it into a mold via a metal tray. And it's a kids' toy, marketed to kids age eight and up. I don't have one because I'm a grown-up who owns a stove, I have little excess storage space, and also, these run from $40 (Target) to $54 (Crayola) to $69 (Fred Meyer).

I love creative toys, but I'm also a fan of creative methodology. And recycling.

So, as it turns out, we're planning a bit ahead for a "Flying Things" birthday party after the new year, and coincidentally, I bumped into the Melt'n Mold booster packs in the art aisle at Target the other day. They had an airplane one, from the Disney movie Planes. Dusty Crophopper, for you fellow parents of preschoolers. It was in the $7 range.

I bought the mold under the assumption that a mold is a mold is a mold. If I can use it with the Factory kit, I should be able to use it without the Factory kit. I poked around on-line before opening the box to see if anyone else had used it that way, and turned up nothing. Luckily, it works just as any other mold works.

 I will say, this kit comes with twelve crayons and claims to make four planes. Coupled with the size of the images on the box, I believed this meant the mold inside would make crayons approximately three crayons large.

But no. The mold makes planes that are a little over an inch in wingspan, and each uses about one crayon's worth of wax. The other two crayons worth of wax must be considered waste wax or something. I got twelve planes using the materials in the box (and then a few dozen with my own materials). Here's how.

First, I got out the crayons. I had a largish box of salvaged thrift store crayons leftover from the last two crayon casting projects (here and here), so I sorted them into groups by color family.

Here's a little glass jam jar with a few varied-color broken crayon pieces in it, heating in a pot of simmering water . If you don't stir or shake the jar and let it simmer over medium-low heat, you can maintain some color separation necessary for that neat marbled effect.

Here's the mold, filled. I used a paper towel to pick up the jar, then gently poured the hot wax into the propped-up mold until it was filled to the line. You'll note a lot of excess at the top of the mold, which can later be broken off and re-melted.

I say to prop it because I discovered the best way to fill the tiny tail fins completely is to rest the mold against something at an angle.

Once each plane crayon cooled, I pressed the center together with my fingers while prying the mold carefully apart. When the bottom half of the mold was off, I turned over the mold and popped the plane out onto a soft paper towel cushion. It mostly worked like a charm, except for the occasional broken propeller or tail fin when breaking off the excess wax.

I tried to use up a lot of my crayon stash and to make some nice swirls; some were more successful than others, but all will make nice party favors. I would recommend that if you want to make a lot of these, having two molds will make the work go faster. It takes about ten minutes for the wax to melt and ten minutes for the castings to cool, so I had the stove on for the better part of a day.

Still, not bad for a $7 investment!

Remember: using art and craft materials against their intended use can be dangerous, so please take precautions to protect yourself! Heating crayon wax in simmering water is not child-safe, and neither is handling melted crayon wax. Grown-ups only! Careful grown-ups only! Safety glasses! Aprons! Gloves! Etc!!!!

That said, I really liked the way the mold worked for this project.

Thanks for reading!

freezer paper stencil toddler art pretzel t-shirt

My kiddo is less familiar with the 1960s than with pretzels, so it wasn't really too surprising when he pronounced the glittery, neon pink "peace sign" shirt a "pretzel shirt" and said he wanted to wear one. I thought something like that might make a nice project for one of the blank t-shirts we've picked up recently, so we headed home to make our own pretzel shirt.

Really, though, this would make a nice project for whatever image your kid wants. And the best part is that it's a great project for even little kids to help with, which means you're not trying to work on it by yourself while your kiddo is pulling at your sleeves.

You can take a peek at one of my previous freezer paper stencil projects (1 and 2) for the basics if you're not familiar with the freezer paper stencil process. Basically, cut a stencil from freezer paper and iron it on. For this project, we also used Crayola's fabric markers (previous freezer paper stencil projects here used acrylic paints and Tee Juice pens).

Because I planned on the kiddo doing most of the coloring, I covered as much of the t-shirt as possible with freezer paper to prevent color from ending up in unintended places. You'll also want to put a piece of cardboard inside the shirt to keep color from seeping through to the back if (like me) you have an enthusiastic marker-wielder.

I let the kiddo pick the colors and tried to encourage him to make sure a lot of color made it onto the shirt rather than the paper . . . but yeah, that's pretty much a losing battle, so I surrendered early.  After removing the stencil and heat-setting the design, we were done.

And here it is, finished! We were both pretty happy with the way it came out, although I think if I were to repeat this project, I'd outline the shape completely first so that any areas with lighter coverage wouldn't blend into the background quite so much. But I think that even without that step, this was a nice collaborative project. He got to color on a shirt, and I got to help make sure it looks like a pretzel.

Thanks for reading! What projects have you been doing with your toddlers lately? We're always looking for fun projects that keep well (read: don't have to be tossed out after a week).

p.s. you can make these photos larger by clicking on them; but you already knew that, clever you.

Crayola Fabric Marker, Assorted (Google Affiliate Ad)

lascaux elk

My kiddo got a hold of some markers the other day . . . because I bought them and then left them out. I try convincing him that markers look best on paper, but he usually channels his inner tattoo artist in the end. Sweet, funny little thing.

This one looks like a Lascaux elk, I think.

Thanks for reading!

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!)


Linking up to:

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!)