Our Crafty Weekend

 

Just a warning, this is a LONG post (and if you do the craft like we did, it will be a LONG craft as well)  Last week I was reading another photographers blog and saw this awesome craft that she did with her kids, and I thought "WOW, that's cool...it can't be hard, let's do it"

I guess maybe I should have emailed her and asked for a little more instruction b/c we WAY overdid this craft.  I mean, really...there are hearts EVERYWHERE in our house, lol.  

So before we get into our hearts, let me just say cheese graters can be dangerous, lol

(the old fashioned ones anyway) so you may want to grate the crayons during naptime or when your children are distracted and NOT begging to help...I won't lie, I grated A LOT of crayons.  We decided that we wanted a rainbow bowl

and a pretty pink and red(and purple) bowl.

 

  

I mean SERIOUSLY, I grated crayons down to nothing.  I wasn't sure how much I would need...

Fionn was willing to help out though.

  

Yep, that is crayon in his mouth, but goodness...look at that smile!  I gave him a couple crayons and a piece of paper, but he chose to color graffiti his high chair and eat the crayons instead.  How could I be angry, he was pretty patient with me while I grated.  He sat there for a good hour and just sang songs and chatted with me while I grated away.  

 

Once we got everything grated, we laid down more towels, more paper towels (things have the ability to get messy at this point) and started cutting pieces of wax paper.  At first we just piled the wax on, but quickly realized that a little goes a LONG way.

And I do mean a LONG way!  If you use too much wax, it will just melt and come out the sides.  {So technical note, we used a waxed paper piece on top and bottom of the shavings.  This doesn't take very much heat either, use your lowest setting, and I found that a lift and press is better than just going over the shavings.  If you melt them straight down, the colors pop up instead of all just blending together.}

 

Once we got ALL the wax done ( I seriously used almost a whole roll of wax paper) we traced hearts on the sheets of wax paper.  We didn't worry about perfect hearts, we tried to look for hearts in our designs and had fun with it.  We then cut them out, and even this step took a while since we made so many!

Poor Fionn

he tried SO hard to stay awake and play with us, but once he got sleepy all it took was "night night" and he didn't care that he was in his high chair still.  He was OUT.

So we kept going...

and going...

 

we punched holes in our hearts(the big ones anyway) to hang them with.  Even this took us a while, lol.  Then we divided up the piles by where we wanted to put them.  We originally just thought we'd do our living room picture window and our set of three windows in our dining room, BUT with so many, we also ended up with enough to decorate a lot more of the house than that, lol.  We're still working on where to put them all!  

We used  a little craft string (Jute) to hang them with and they look GREAT.

  

This is our final product in our upstairs hallway window.  We have these roman blinds on most of our windows and the hearts look beautiful with them behind them.  This was taken late in the afternoon, I'll try for a few daylight shots of the other windows tomorrow!  

So there you have it, our house is now ready for "Love Day"  We have a few more crafts set up for this week and next, and Maggie had a GREAT idea tonight for her class Valentines, so we're off to make those next!  

This week is Catholic Schools week and we have a lot of events planned at Maggie's school.  Today for the first day the first grade classes put on a play.  She worked on her lines for the last couple weeks, and did so well today, we were so proud.  I'll post more about that tomorrow!!