A Pin Test #10: Stain Glass Hearts

It's Pin Test #10, inspired by this pin for Crayon Shaving Hearts by Skip To My Lou on Pinterest. I remember doing cravon shaving stained glass in grade school. The one thing I didn't remember or realize when I was a wee girl was how messy this project is.

Here was our process:

1) We started out by buying four boxes of 48-count crayons at the dollar store. We invested four dollars in those.

2) The Bug pulled out all the pinks, purples and reds out of each box of crayons. Hooray for a craft step a kid can mostly do by themselves. I opened the boxes, she did the rest. We ended up with a cereal bowl about half full of crayons.

3) Shaved the crayons. We used pencil sharpeners and had to experiment to find the best of the sharpeners we had in our house. Unfortunately the crayons were too big for our battery-operated sharpener. So we spent about an hour making pencil sharpenings with the crayons. It was ridiculously messy and we had sore fingers when we were done. This was the low point. There always is one in every craft venture I've found. Ha.

4) Using a cool iron we melted the crayons between to pieces of wax paper. Be sure to use kraft paper or a paper grocery bag between the wax paper and the iron and the ironing board. It's still likely your iron may get a little wax on it. Easy to clean up if you turn the iron to high and rub it on an old towel.

5) Cut the "stain glass' into heart shapes. This also can get messy as the bits of crayon break off  from between the wax paper and fall everywhere. So do this over a trash can or some surface that is easy to clean up.

6) Punch holes in the center top of the hearts. Then string ribbon, twine or fishing line through the hold and cut enough length to hang the hearts from a window or the ceiling.

I had been wanting to try this for a while and I am glad we did it. The mess factor was a little more than I was happy with. They are also very fragile and don't travel well. They're definitely not something you could put in the mail very easily for a fun gift. I think they would be crumbled. But it's fun to have something pretty to hang in the windows and we'll enjoy them while they last. Definitely a fun project to try, but I definitely learned some lessons, as always, on the way.