Arts and Crafts Time!

I spent a good part of the week working on various detail-esque things for the wedding.  I know that most of these will not be realized for the genius and thought that went into them, in fact most will be over looked, and that's okay.  These details, however, make me happy.  I am the one who will see it all come together, and know that I got exactly what I wanted! For now, I wanted to share my flower crayons!

The sorted and broken crayons pre-oven

Hot molten lava crayons straight out of the oven

The finished product!

This was a project I knew I wanted to do immediately and was really excited for! I knew it was going to be cost friendly and pretty straight forward, plus it would add a little element of "Aww!" and excitement for the Little Ones, which is always a plus.

I never got to do these sorts of projects growing up, but thought it looked so fun and super easy.  The hardest part (literally got blisters from it!) was peeling off the crayon wrappers and breaking up all the crayons. If (or when) I do a project like this again I think I might peel the crayons over the course of a few nights.  To fill the tray it took me 2 and 1/2 hours to peel about 80 crayons.  I also spent a lot of time neatly arranging them in a the pan (I know, so silly... the point is they all melt together! Definitely regretted not thinking this part through when I saw what happened to the yellow center of what was suppose to be a white and silver daisy. Oops!)

All in all, I love how these turned out.

Supplies and Cost Breakdown:
    -Silicone Flower cupcake pan (Pampered Chef) [free, borrowed from Mom!]
    -Crayons (all various brands and colors) Side note: I had a 48 pack already which would have been enough to make enough crayons for a kid or two, but I bought 5 extra packs of 24 (during a back to school sale at Target for $.65 a pop!) because of how many kids will likely be at the reception. I don't want them to start fighting over a specific crayon or color so I needed to make sure there would be enough to keep 'em all happy!
    -Oven
Total $3.25

Directions:
(1) Arrange the crayons in the color combinations of your preference (i used about 6 full crayons per flower).
(2) Preheat oven to 275 degrees F.
(3) Watch the crayons closely, they melt fast.  All they need is about 6 to 8 minutes before they're ready to come out.
(4) Let them cool completely (you can put them in the freezer after about 10-15 minutes if you want to speed this us).

Final Tallies:
    -Total prep time (because I had to break all the crayons myself): 2.5 hours* I eventually figured out a faster way to unwrap them, using a razor blade to split the wrapper down the side, unfortunately this was after my first 2.5 hour batch =(
    -Total "cook" time: 7 minutes (this varied per batch but my average was about 7)
    -Total Cool Down: I let my crayons cool a about 20 minutes a set (5-10 out of the oven; 10-15 in the freezer).
    -Total Cost per crayon: (30 all together) about $.11 per crayon!