The Unplugged Theme this past week was wax. We did a pretty standard melted crayon/wax paper stained glass project. This was the first time I’ve done this project with the kids so they thought it was pretty cool.
We started with some old Ziplock baggies (you will ruin them so reuse some old ones), crayons left over from restaurants (I always try to remember to pocket the crayons from the restaurants that don’t reuse the crayons), a wooden mallet and a painting board (cutting board, etc). We removed the paper and sorted the crayons by color. We choose to only use leaf colors. We put all the reds, oranges and pinks in one bag – all the yellows and greens in the other. Then the kids got to whack away at the baggies on the board until we got very, very small pieces. You could use a cheese grater but this seemed much safer for the kids… albeit noisy.
Then we sprinkled the wax bits onto a piece of wax paper, wax side up (crayon bits that got too close to the edges did bleed over the edge). Place another sheet of wax paper, wax side down. Sandwich your wax paper between two pieces of scrap fabric (didn’t try it but paper towel might work). Iron until melted. You want that scrap fabric… I had some colors bleed through!
To make frames for widow panes, we folded two sheets of construction paper together and cut out a basic leaf shape… kinda like cutting out a Valentine Heart. Then we cut out the center leaving only about a 1/2″ frame. We traced the shape onto the wax paper sheets and cut out a center panel… slightly smaller that the outside of the frame. We used a glue stick to sandwich one construction paper leaf frame, one wax paper cut out and the other construction paper leaf frame together.
We used double sided tape to stick them up on windows throughout the house. They are quite pretty! One of the things I love about all the crafts we have been doing is how much the house is really being defined by the kids… and not just in that “toys all over” sorta way.
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Those look so pretty with the real leaves behind.
(: Those are so cool:)
Those Are so pretty
(: I love them 🙂
They turned out beautiful. How’s about making a few for Gammy…hint, hint, nudge, nudge!
Beautiful! (Make some for Gammy.)
Those are lovely! You didn’t have any problems with the wax paper not sticking? The last time I tried ironing wax paper it didn’t really melt and stick like I remembered. I was discouraged, but your lovely leaves are inspiring me to try again! (I would like my house to be “defined” by kids’ art rather than their toys too!)
I was trying to sandwich some tissue paper punch outs in wax paper, but it stuck only sporadically in tiny places. The rest was like parchment paper. Does the brand of wax paper matter? I used Marcal and also tried a sheet of Kabinet Wax paper. Iron was on highest setting.
When I work with Tissue Paper I use Contact Paper not waxed paper. See our Stained Glass Heart Project on Wee Folk Art. The crayon bits work with the wax paper because they are wax and help hold it together. I would imagine that the tissue paper/wax paper wouldn’t work well because there wouldn’t be enough points of contact… wax to wax.
No we didn’t have any problems with the paper not sticking. It worked like a charm. There is definitely a right side though and I had my hubby buy the name brand stuff not the store brand.
We have some more melted wax/crayon sheets left so we can definitely make a few more for Gammy.
Those leaves turned out beautifully!!
ohhh yours are 100 times better than what we did!! I didnt have an ordinary crayons (hello what the? – where have they gone- when you need something you can never find) so we used oil crayons…
your affect was so good!! and so smart about the fabric.. I burnt the first one as the iron went right through the wax paper!! – I never thought to cover it with something – silly me!!
The art work looks lovely. I love (in the last photo) how the sun is shining through the window and through the art work.
This is exactly what I intended to do. We’ve been super busy and haven’t got around to the themes because of it. These are gorgeous and I think I will have to them even though the theme is over!
Your leaves turned out beautiful.
This seems to have been a common interpretation on this weeks theme, but I have learned a little from each family that tried it.
I love the idea of putting the crayons into a plastic baggie and pounding them. It seems a lot safer than the cheese grater. I also learned that you can use a crayon or pencil sharpener to make the shavings.
We had some crayon bleed through on ours as well. I think maybe we had the iron set a little too hot.