Reuse ~ Repurpose: Week 3

Doesn't this look like a planet?

As you may or may not know, my boyfriend is a grade school teacher. One day, he came home with a big bag of over-used and/or broken crayons. He asked me if I could think of anything to do with these, and of course, I said "Yes!"

One of my favorite things to do as a child was to grind up my crayons that were too short for the box, or duplicates of other colors I had newer versions of, and I pile up the shavings into a Tupperware. I would then make glue & crayon shaving drawings with them until my mom got mad at me for the mess I was making in my room.

Those drawings didn't hold up well with time, but I learned another fun project that you can use crayon shavings to do, and I learned it from Martha Stewart, who had probably learned it from someone else.... as I remember doing this project in school art class, years ago.

I love the stained glass look of the hearts and circles. Some of the circles actually resemble planets like Jupiter, with it's colorful gassy composition.

To make the hearts/shapes, all you need is crayons shaved into piles, waxed paper, kraft paper/layers of newspaper, and an iron. I also punched little holes into the shapes after I cut them, and strung them together with embroidery thread. The circles were glued in place, one on each side of the thread. Less crayon shavings make more translucent "stained glass" and heavier crayon shavings gives you denser, richer looking "stained glass".

It's such a fun project to do on a cold, wintry day. Although, make sure your cats are asleep when you start to string the pieces into garlands! Otherwise, it could get a little more like a game of tug-o-war!