Hello there! We had a busy holiday season, that required a little post holiday break. But now we are back, with refreshed spirits, bundles of energy and some new blog posts! One of my biggest activites and creative moments as a nanny, is the holiday season. I spend a lot of time researching ideas that are creative and out of the box, but easy enough for C to actively have a hand in. For C’s first Christmas we used salt dough and adorned his tiny baby handprint in gold paint. In 2016, we made adorable salt dough handprints and painted a cute santa out of his handprint!

After starting and failing this craft a few times, I came up with a fool proof plan to help you make these super awesome “Melted Crayon Glass Ornaments”. We broke our craft up over a few days, but this could easily be done in one sitting. I loved this activity beacuse it allowed such an easy learning activity. In this one activity, we covered science: observing the change of matter (melting), refreshing our color knowledge and learning about mixing colors. The only downfall to the activity was that C would confuse ornaments for balls and would throw them, so be warned! For this craft you’ll need:

Step One: I assumed an easy way to get the crayons to melt quickly would be to grate them down into tiny pieces. However, this is a painstaking process that doesn’t really work. Our next attempt consisted of a hammer, a ziploc bag and patience. C loved using the hammer to smash the crayons but it does require a super attentive eye to ensure safety. However you do it, make sure your crayon pieces are small enough to melt easily.

Step two: put your broken crayons into the glass ornaments. You’ll want to be careful with the color arrangement- to many dark colors and you won’t be able to discern any colors in your ornaments. We used all the colors except for the black crayon. I loved adding in chunks of white, it adds a really pretty streak through the ornament.

Step three: we used a box and put our ornaments inside. From there we plugged in the blow dryer, turned it on high and let it get to work. C had such a blast using the blow dryer to move the ornaments from side to side. Make sure to blow your ornament every way, so that the wax covers the entire ball. If using plastic be wary of melting through the plastic with the blow dryer.

Step Four: After letting the wax dry in the ornaments, we took the time to tie ribbons around the bulb of each ornament. We used a black ribbon with gold snowflakes to allow the ornament to hang from the tree.

Step Five: C helped me stuff tissue in each box to protect the glass orb from injury. We made a little Christmas card to attach to the gift and that’s it!

This was a fun an easy craft that C absolutely loved! Let me know what crafts or gifts your decided to handmade in 2017.