Getting Crafty for Valentine's Day

First of all, I have to say that I hate those cheesy little Valentine's that you buy for the kids to exchange at school.  They are lame.  They are overpriced.  I mean, they don't even come with envelopes anymore.  Why bother?  Because the kids love to exchange Valentine's!

This year, we decided to make Valentine's for the kids to exchange at school.  We had to make use of what craft supplies we already had on hand.  After all, we still aren't in a position to be throwing money around!  So I began to scour the internet for inspiration.  I stumbled upon an idea for crayon hearts that looked cute and we just happened to have a shoe box full of old crayons.

So we began to remove the paper from all of the crayons in preparation for the melting phase.  This was the least fun part, especially when we got to the crayons with extra strong glue.  We ended up soaking some in warm water in order to get the paper off.  Then we broke all the crayons into pieces and put them into heart shaped silicone muffin molds.  We then melted them in the oven.

After they were cooled, we popped them out of the molds and voila, swirly crayon hearts.

Source: Michael McConnell

We printed a message on card stock and mounted it on a square of decorative scrapbook paper with glue dots.  We attached some double sided foam tape to the back of each crayon heart and then stuck it to the card stock.  We made a total of 44.  We had enough supplies to make them all without having to buy anything.

Source: Michael McConnell

Click here for the original directions for crayon hearts.  For more Valentine's Day ideas, click here.

Source: Michael McConnell