Monday, December 22, 2008

Holiday crafting

So each holiday I like to make a little something for the publishing folks I've worked with that year. This year it seemed fitting to pick an activity from my craft book, What Can You Do with an Old Red Shoe?, since I spent much of the year working on it. Sadly many of the projects are not easily shippable (I was definitely not going to send a dozen little red shoes in the mail), so I thought I'd make some good old recycled crayons. Who doesn't need crayons after all?

First I gathered up my bits of crayons from past art classes taught, and melted them in my oven. Then came the fun part, splattering them into ice cube trays:







Here is the result, in their imperfect glory (it is good for perfectionists like me to do something messy now and again):



I got some little envelopes from Paper Source and covered them with my web site stickers:



Then packaged up the little guys so they were all ready to go:





This is what my ice cube tray looked like after:



It was not, unfortunately, the only thing in my kitchen to get melted, colored wax all over it (the stove, counter, pans and the floor got their fair share)... but like I said, its good therapy for someone like me, who spends quite a lot of her time sitting in front of a computer or painting teeny tiny pictures of bunnies.

5 comments:

B P said...

Those look really cool and I think I could manage that craft. I wonder what kinds of neat patterns one could make in each crayon? And how hard was it to get the kitchen back to it's original color and texture?

Anna Alter said...

Let me know if you need any tips- you have to let each color dry a few minutes before adding another... and the clean-up wasn't too hard. Just don't use any pans or dishes you care too much about- though most will come clean with some boiling water and an SOS pad.

Anonymous said...

Very good!

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