Valentine's Day Heart Crayons for the Kids

I've made these heart crayons a number of times and they're still a favorite craft of my daughter. Plus they're a great way to use up old crayons and obviously cute to give to class friends on Valentines Day. I think they're adorable as is, but if you're feeling more ambitious and have more time then you can also easily turn them into magnets.

The most time consuming part of this craft is taking the paper off the crayons. The cheaper the crayons - the harder the paper is to get off. I used a knife to make a slit down the side of the crayon, and then just peeled it off. However, this can really easily result in cutting a finger so please be careful and absolutely don't let a child do that part. You have to be really, really careful (I can't stress that enough)... I used a small steak knife because that was the smallest one I had on hand.

Next you want to break the crayons up into tiny pieces. You don't necessarily have to sort the crayons into colors, but we did. I've found that if you melt too many colors together, the hearts can end up looking muddy. So this time around I sorted them by color (actually my little 8 year old helper did that part).

Then we filled the heart cups with fun color palettes. I used the silicone heart cups by Wilton, which I purchased at a Michael's store a few years back.

Place the heart cups on a baking sheet and bake them at 225 degrees Fahrenheit for approx 12-15 minutes. Allow them to cool for an hour before popping them out of the silicone cups. This is how they will look after they have cooled and you take them out of the silicone cups:

I love how the colors really pop. We even used all those brown crayons together and they made very cool "earthy" colored hearts (you can see one on the top right in the picture above). My favorite crayon is the pink, gray and white. My daughters favorite is the red, yellow and pink:

I thought packaging the crayons on library cards would be a good idea since these are for school friends.

So I stamped the date "Feb 14th 2015" into the date section, using an American Crafts roller stamp. Then I had my daughter hand write the names of her class mates onto the cards. You can either attach the crayons with a glue dot, or use twine to secure them to the cards.

These are a little time consuming and lets face it, its easier and faster to buy something at the store. But my daughter seriously loves making these and they're obviously a better alternative to candy...