Arts & Crafts with Little Birds: Crayon Shavings Stars

So I wanted to make these, only just using the bits and pieces of crayons found at the back our crayon drawer.

I tossed the crayons into the mini food-processor attachment to my stick blender and ground up the crayons. Then Greyson sprinkled the bits on to wax paper.


Then I ironed it!

I probably should have stopped here when the patterened looks awesome, but I kept ironing and made mush.


Green mush.


Luckily Greyson still thought it was pretty cool. Before it totally cooled down, but it wasn't burning hot I let him run his fingers around it. I know he doesn't look too happy about it, but this is just his concentrating face.


After that I used a cookie cutter to trace and cut-out stars and Greyson taped them to a string. He is shockingly accurate at taping, and very careful.


We hung our string of stars in the window. Greyson picked out one for each of us. There was a "Daddy Star", a "Mommy Star", a "Greyson Star" and a "Tal-la-la Star". He'd come back to it throughout the day and point out the different stars.

I think we will do other versions of this craft again soon. I need to get rid of all the regular crayons and replace them all with the washable kind. 2 of our walls and one door-jam now have Greyson Perry Originals on permanent display...

Art & Crafts With Little Birds: Contact Paper Collage #1

I wanted a easy craft that Greyson could do next to me while I got some office work done this morning and came up with Contact Paper Collages. I set up the project the night before. I found some great over-sized thick plastic place-mats at Target the other day. They are my new favorite things - perfect for project set-up.

2 sheets of really, really old contact paper I found in the cabinet and some shapes I cut out from old scrap booking supplies and construction paper is all it took.


So when the morning "fussies" hit I pulled the place-mat and Greyson went to town. He was really excited about the cars and trucks I cut out. But then he started on a second sheet and became enamored with shapes! We had a great time talking about shapes and colors all while staying clean and letting me get some office work done with my little buddy sitting right next to me.


Here is the final shape collage. I covered it in cling-wrap and it is now hanging on the fridge.


We'll finish the other one this evening when the "fussies" return.