Most the time I do a craft or DIY project and I'm super proud of it and impressed at how well/easy/quick etc. it worked. Yesterday, I posted about my super successful felt tree for my girls. Make sure you check that out if you have little ones.
So, I have used clear ornaments in the past to make super fun glittery ornaments or painted ones. And I have ALWAYS had great luck with the clear bulbs and love how diverse you can make them.
I will do a tutorial on that soon as my current clear Christmas ornament project was a flop, but first, the flop!
So I read a post somewhere about melting crayons in a clear Christmas ornament to give it a marbled look. I didn't look up a tutorial as it looked easy enough, maybe that's why this wasn't a success...hmm
I thought this would be a super fun project to do with my 5 year old B. She's super crafty and loves doing projects with momma, so we decided to give it a try while K napped one day. The previous day I had B look EVERYWHERE for crayons that were wither broken, not with an art set or current Crayola box. I gave her a Tupperware container and she hunted for mix-matched, broken crayons.
Once the crayons were collected we got to work peeling off each and every wrapper.
By the way, if you haven't unwrapped crayons in the last couple years, these are not as easy to peel off as they were when I was in school.
You used to be able to press on one end of the crayon and the wrapper would eventually slide up and off the crayon... yeah, not anymore! These suckers are GLUED on now! It still wasn't too "HARD" peeling them off, but it definitely took time, and was hard for B to do on her own. So I would find the seam, and slide my nail under it to break the seal then let her unwrap. Otherwise there were tons of teeny tiny paper rips everywhere from her attempts.
Here's what the finished container of unwrapped crayons looked like
We planned on making each of her good friends their very own ornament, so I asked her who she wanted to make one for first and what colors she wanted to use. The first friend she chose was a little girl and she wanted to use pink and purple in her ornament. I took one pink and one purple crayon, and with a chefs knife cut them in half. I then began chopping the crayons as fine as I could.
This process was extremely messy, I used a cutting board but little shard of wax were flying everywhere! Anyways, I chopped up half the pink and half the purple, then put the shards (as best as possible) into the clear ornament.
I KNOW I took pictures of this messy process but now they aren't on my phone... so? KIDS? that's easy to blame them ;)
Next came the blow drying.
Guys, I have natural curls, I RARELY use a hairdryer, and when I do it's on low heat. My blowdryer does not have the capability of getting as hot as most do, but blowdrying the ornaments was HOT. I was burning my hands, hence the oven mitt. B and I tried really hard to work together but she ended up not being able to do much.
When you put the shards of crayon into the bulb, obviously it's all pulled to the bottom, cause, gravity :)
So I mostly blow dried the bottom of the bulbs and GUESS WHAT HAPPENED?!
THE TOP of the bulb melted!!!!
I'm still baffled at how this happened when the heat was pointed at the BOTTOM of the ornament!
Once this happened I was done, I quit!
it was a lot of work, a lot of mess just for my bulb to melt!
Now, I know what you're thinking "hello, GLASS ornament, not Plastic...?!"
I chose plastic because my 5 year old was going to be holding and assisting and she would've been heart broken if she dropped one and it shattered. I'm sure had I used glass it would not have melted BUT glass gets HOT too!
It was very hard to hold the round, smooth, Hot ornament. it would not have been easier holding glass...
Here you can see my melted ornament :(
The colors all melted and marbled together looks pretty but it just wasn't work the hassle in my honest opinion
Here's the ornament she was going to make for a little boy she's friends with but...I haven't been in the mood to even attempt this one :(
We will DEFINITELY be using the leftover bulbs to make painted ornaments, I think I will be able to get those a marbled effect so stay tuned, that post will definitely be up by this weekend!!
Thank you to all my readers so far! I'm loving seeing more new followers each day.
ALWAYS feel free to comment suggestions!
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