Drawing & Painting

Imagine the delight on your children's faces when they open this carton of eggs...

and find these lovely gems inside!

No, it is not a dozen hard boiled eggs, but rather a dozen Soy Crayons! It is easy to sing the praises of soy crayons; brilliant colors, smooth drawing without flaking, biodegradable, renewable resource and non toxic. You can buy ready made soy crayons (Bella Luna carries Soy Rocks) or you can make them yourself. Understand, soy crayons aren't for every project. The wax is soft and begins melting at a low temp. As a matter of fact, even holding a soy crayon for too long will start the surface to become "slimy" (but in a good way :) You can't use them for detailed work BUT for projects begging for large sweeps of a crayon, this is the perfect choice. They are always a wonderful choice for your youngest budding artists; easy to hold and you don't need to press down hard to get results. 

Directions:
To make soy crayons simply melt soy wax flakes,

add coloring agent,

pour into desired mold,

allow to cool completely, and there you have it... a soy crayon.

Wax can be melted on the stove top set at medium to medium low, or it melts wonderfully, in a microwave safe container, in just minutes. Hint: To easily remove crayons from mold, I submerged the mold in very hot tap water for a few seconds, thus melting the surface a bit, and they popped right out! Note: as the wax cools, it will contract. When filling my eggs, I needed to reheat some of the left over wax and pour into the mold to "top it off".

Resources I used:
I purchased my soy wax flakes from www.zionsvillecandleco.com and my veggie based colorant from www.fireandicecandles.com. I used egg molds that I had gotten years ago from Jello. Unfortunately, Jello no longer sells the molds, but I did check out EBay and there were quite a few Sellers with them for sale or try your local thrift store. To melt the wax I used some plastic cups left over from days gone by... not a good idea. As the wax began to melt... so did the cups. I am going to keep my eyes open at the thrift store and garage sales for 1 cup Pyrex measuring cups.

Because the quantity of soy wax flakes you will need varies with the molds you use it is hard to estimate how "much" you will need for a project. In general, I found 1 cup of flakes yields 1/2 cup melted wax, so a 2:1 ration. To get vibrant colors I needed to add 4 colorant wax chips to 1 cup of the unmelted soy wax chips. And, in my case, it took about 1/2 cup of the melted wax to fill each egg.     

So, whether you want to make a dozen colored soy wax eggs for Easter or just a few to add to your child's crafting supplies, you are all set to go. Obviously, hot wax is... well... it's hot, so use caution especially if children are "helping". Also, because the wax melts at such a low temperature, I was able to wash all the spoons and containers in my dishwasher. Everything came out clean and there was no residual mess in the dishwasher, making clean up a breeze!

BTW... if you have a favorite suppliers of the soy wax flakes or the color agents, please share :)

EDIT: I thought I was going to dodge the creepy crude that's been working its way through Michelle's house the past two weeks, But, alas, I finally caught the bug! I was working on a project but for the past 24 hours sleep seemed like a better idea. So, I thought I'd share our felt eggs... again. This is a great early learning project. Fast and easy, and they are lovely without the embroidery or paint. Make a dozen decorated for Easter, and a dozen for the play kitchen. K... that's all the energy I have... going to go wrestle the dogs for the couch :)  

This is the last egg project of the week. If you're not into making eggs out of roving, then try some of these Traditional Felt Eggs. VERY easy to make. Copy the pattern then you simply take 2 egg pieces, blanket stitch them together, leave an opening at the bottom, stuff and finish blanket stitching them closed. You can leave them plain or add embroidery or fabric paint to decorate. I did a combination. Although you can paint or embroider the eggs before you stitch them together, if you want a uniform pattern around the egg, wait until after it has been stuffed. The pattern includes 2 different sized eggs. The smaller eggs will fit in a standard egg carton. Perfect size if you'd like to make a dozen white or brown eggs for the play kitchen! There are no additional directions since it is very straightforward, but the pattern is available in the FREE Open Pattern section. Enjoy!

FYI... If you can't tell from the photo you are either being very kind or I did a remarkable job of camouflaging... I really am puff paint challenged! I always felt like my embroidery flowed like paint... thank goodness I was wrong! I was all thumbs as I tried to transfer my mental image to the eggs. So... there are smudges here and blobs there. Alas, not perfect, but the colors are still lovely, right? And if you squint your eyes just a wee bit, you can hardly notice the imperfections. Ah, we all need to be humbled occasionally!

So, last time I told you about handprints on the ceiling of my preschool and how hard it was for me to leave them. When I decorated our playroom here, I wanted my grandbabies' handprints included. I decided I was going to print them on a cloud. Then, my ever brilliant Tim, suggested we cut clouds out of plywood, so when we eventually move, we could take them with us! Smart guy, right?

To make the clouds, begin by drawing a lofty cloud on paper. My clouds are approximately 42" x 28". To make a pattern use butcher block paper or tape pieces of newspaper together. I have not included a pattern of a cloud, because to be quite honest, it is far easier to simply sketch one than to try to enlarge a pattern. If you need inspiration, look at one of my clouds in this post or in When the Cows Come Home.

After you have drawn a cloud, cut it out and trace around the outer edge on 3/4" plywood. Round the edges by sanding. (If you don't have tools to do this yourself, make a pattern, buy the plywood, and offer to make a pan of brownies for anyone that can help you cut it out! It really is a fast project.)

After it is cut out, begin by painting the front and edges a light to medium blue. After it is dry, using a large brush, paint the cloud white, using a swirling stroke. Begin at the outer edge, and work inward. It's okay to let a little of the blue show through here and there. It will give more dimension to the cloud. Use should only need one coat of white paint. I used a satin finished paint. After your clouds have dried, they are ready to put handprints on.

Here is what we do with our clouds. We have 1 cloud for each grandchild. Every year in January we add a new handprint. Since Michelle has 3 children, they have 3 clouds. Instead of putting all their handprints on individual clouds, we rotate through the clouds every 3 years, and each year all three of the children put their handprint on the same cloud. We figure we will have them do this until they are 14 years old. When they have all turned 14, we will have 3 clouds, each with 14 sets of handprints, with each sibling having their own cloud to keep. Besides taking their handprints, on the back of the clouds, we write their age at the time of the printing, and list their favorite activities, toys and color, and include their clothing size... just for fun!

Tim and I have 5 children. So far only 1 of them has given us grandbabies. We plan to continue this tradition as each child starts their own family. As you can well imagine, we will have very cloudy walls! Although clouds fit well into the theme of our playroom, you can use this same idea with any number of shapes. 

I think the grandbabies will love these when they are grown up and off on their own. What a special keepsake!

(BTW... I blobbed out the children's real names... looks a bit messy! Should have had Michelle Photoshop them I suppose but you get the idea!!!)
 

The kids created these beautiful Angels Rejoicing Paintings this week. I got the basic idea for the watercolor technique from Gail at ThatArtistWoman (I love her blog for kid art ideas) and from that I developed our own unique holiday related theme project. This project took us two days and incorporated several of my kids favorite things... painting and glitter!

Check out the Watercolor Angel Painting Directions here or in our Kids Crafts database.