Recycled Crayon Disks

If you have kids, you have crayons. If you have crayons, you have little pieces of broken crayons.

My son and I sat at his desk and sorted though his crayons and took out all the broken ones.  I remember doing this with my mom when I was little and thought it was so cool making my own crayons.  Now I know you can now go to the store and buy a Crayola Crayon Maker, but I don't have one so we are doing it how I remember!  I had/have a silicone muffin pan (and frankly I hate using it, it never seemed clean and just seemed like more of a hassle) so...I decided that it would be perfect for crayon making.  The mini muffin pan would probably be even better but I only have the regular so that is what we used.

 

We made adding the broken crayons to the pan like a game of sorts.  We separated them in to color categories, depending on the amount of broken pieces you could expand the categories. We had dark colors, reds and oranges, greens and blues, and yellows with white.  For some reason there were more broken yellows.  

Once they were all in the pan, I sent my son to play and I put the pan in the oven.  It was set at 350 degrees and only heated for about 10 minutes.  You just need to leave the pan in until the crayons are just melted.  Set aside to cool and harden.  Then I got my son and we took the "new" crayons out of the pan.  He first tried to take a bite of one, a little misunderstanding on his part...but I showed him and they were added with the other crayons.



Peacock Feather Earrings

If you follow me on Pinterest, then you may have seen my pin regarding Peacock Feather earrings.  The original post was by Simply Allis. So while having a craft day with a friend and neighbor, I decided to give them a shot.  I had and still have a bunch of peacock feathers that my mom gave me a long time ago, seriously it was probably sometime in high school, how they have lasted this long one only knows. (I am sure the age of the feathers is why the long strands look a little battered.)  I debated on trimming the feathers but as you can see I didn't.



What I used; peacock feathers, earring hooks, crimps, thread, modge podge (love that stuff!), thin jewelry wire.  I started by cutting and trimming the feather so I had a nice shape, then I stripped a little of the feathers off the quill leaving about an inch. (Sorry I don't have pictures showing the process.) I took the wire and threaded it through the earring hook so that about an inch of the wire hung from the hook, (it should be folded in half looking like two pieces hanging.) Take a crimp and slide the wires through it, but do not crimp yet!  Take the feather and carefully put the quill between the wire and in the crimp. Using pliers, crimp until snug.  I then took blue thread and dipped in modge podge, and wrapped the quill and wires.  Hang to dry. There you go.

I recently cut my hair, and think I like the way they looked with longer hair better but, that is ok I will wear them any way!

Original earrings from Simply Allis

And FYI...I could pull them off!