Art Time - Painting with Melted Crayons

We did this little art project a couple of days before St. Patrick’s Day; I liked the idea of using crayons to paint a rainbow, and it turned out better than I imagined.  M loved this and we’ll definitely do it again sometime soon.   I first saw the idea in a MaryAnn Kohl book (either Scribble Art or Preschool Art) about two years ago, but have since seen it around the blogosphere a couple of times too.

Using melted crayons to paint a bouquet of flowers would make a wonderful Mother’s Day gift, or any spring-time sort of artwork!

We began with a bucket full of M’s “naked” (no paper) crayons.  He loves removing the paper and sharpening crayons, so this step was already done.  Seriously, if you need an activity for a rainy day, have your child peel paper off of crayons and then sharpen them with a crayon sharpener.  M could do this all day!  

Next we chose several crayons in various shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.  We broke them up (lots of fun!) and placed them by color into an old muffin tin, lined with paper cups:

I placed the muffin tin in a 400 (Fahrenheit) degree oven.  It took about 10 minutes for the crayons to completely melt.  In the meantime I boiled some water and poured it into a cake pan.  Once the crayons were melted I set the muffin tin into the cake pan too.  The hot water was there to keep the crayons melted, as they tend to harden pretty quickly.  If you have a warming tray you could use that instead.  I really need a warming tray!  :)

I had pre-drawn our design and M used q-tips to paint it with the melted crayons:

    

The crayon went on very thick and created an incredible texture.  I just loved it! 

M’s finished shamrock and rainbow:This looks so much more amazing in real life. :)

It was so much fun, we just had to make something else, so a quick heart was drawn and painted (and Mama got in on the action this time!):

 

Linking to:

Have a beautiful day! :)

How Lent Went (3)

:) 1. artwork    2. lenten tray    3. countdown cross

The Jesse Tree has been such a meaningful part of Advent in our home that I thought perhaps we could do something similar during Lent.  I searched and searched and searched some more, but couldn’t find anything that seemed just right for us.  So, of course, I ended up making something of my own.  By the time I had everything figured out and ready to go we were well into Lent.  But it has turned out great, and we’ll use it for years to come, I’m sure.

I decided to use a flannel board as our background; it just works so nicely, and I like having the softness of felt pieces to place on it.  A simple flannel board is super easy to make!  Ours is about 30” high and 20” wide.

I cut a large cross from brown felt and tacked it onto the board.

All of the pieces we put on this were made by printing pictures and images onto transfer paper (like for t-shirts), which I then ironed onto white felt. 

We began with this little piece, made for Ash Wednesday (although, as I mentioned, we were a bit late): 

Then we had tiny little flower bulbs, numbered from 1 to 40 for the days of lent, and we placed the correct one on the cross each day: At this time we’d also read the Bible reading for the day, or, if the story seemed a little too much for M’s understanding, we would read from our Little Acts of Grace book. 

Each Sunday we read two of the Sunday readings - one Old Testament story and one New Testament story - and placed small pictures illustrating the stories on the flannel board.  Here are the ones for the second Sunday – Moses striking a rock in the desert and water coming out for the thirsty people, and Jesus at the well with the Samaritan woman:

 

Sundays are not part of the 40 days of Lent, so no flower bulbs those days.  This is how it looked about one-half of the way through:

We also had some special pictures for Holy Thursday (The Last Supper), and Good Friday (a crucifix):

Then Easter morning came and…

Alleluia was freed from it’s little tomb and placed high on our board:

And…

All the flower bulbs had burst into bloom!

A picture of the empty tomb was in the center of the cross:

It was really beautiful, and such a nice way to really make Lent this year a more meaningful part of our life.

This went over pretty well with M, although he does like the Jesse Tree more, because he gets “a yummy piece of candy” every day. :)  I felt like something was missing each day with just putting a flower bulb on the cross.  I think it would be nice to add something else – perhaps a list of little things to do, letting M pick one per day at the same time he places the bulb on the cross…. I’ll have to think about this some more! 

Just a little feather to put in your cap and think about… I am planning on making this available as a printable eventually, with more detailed instructions, daily readings, etc., and I plan on making a complete second set and holding a giveaway for it on my blog sometime early next year. :)  So if you are interested, make sure to check in around early February in 2012, if you can remember! :)

Have a beautiful day! :)