The Zaremba Family: Renewing The Love

In honor of Valentine's Day a new take of the Statue of Liberty quote, written by yours truly...

"Give me your tired, your broken,

Your bits and pieces yearning to color again,

The abandoned singles from every nook and cranny.

Send these, the paperless, separated from the pack to me,

I renew their life and bring coloring joy again!"

Our tired and broken ready for a new life.

I have been planning a planning a fantastic Valentine art project for the kids since early last Fall when I saw the idea on Pinterest. I even put supplies for it on my Christmas list. Finally the time was here to make our heart crayons. The only thing I didn't count on was that items on the internet may be smaller than they appear. When I added silicon heart shaped pans to my Christmas list I didn't realize how many crayons it would take to fill the size I requested. Now looking at the example pan the hearts were much smaller. The end product is amazing and the kids will love giving them to their special friends for Valentines Day. But my dream of them giving them to all their classmates is a bust. Good thing I had a backup plans in place so the show can go on.

Here's the process of making this project -

Step 1: Gather all your old worn out crayons. We had approx 200 old crayons.

Step 2: Have your kids help you peel the paper off the crayons. I found it helped to slit the paper with a small knife so it could be easily peeled off. Note: Peeling the paper off crayons when Mom says it's okay is not nearly as exciting as peeling it off when you're suppose to keep your crayons nice. This also applies to breaking the crayons with Mom's permission.

All the paper we peeled off our crayons!

Step 3: Break and / or cut up the crayons into small pieces approx 2-3 centimeters so you can get them into your pan.

Step 4: Fill pans, I used silicon hearts but any silicon shapes should work since the bendable pan lets you remove the crayon neatly. We filled ours almost level with the pan top but not brimming, they did melt down as they cooked.

Step 5: Preheat over to 230. Bake for 20-30 minutes until your crayons are fully melted down into your mold. The directions I found said 15 but due to the large size of our hearts it took longer.

Step 6: Try not to cry when you think they are ruined - for some reason the top of our crayons turned nearly all one color and I thought the colors had all blended together but the bottoms and sides are nicely speckled.