Spring is the time of year when our calendar starts filling up with birthday parties! We were on our third party when I decided we should get creative with the gift wrapping. I've never made a recycled crayon, but have always wanted to, and thought that the shape would be perfect as a gift tag! We started by taking the wrappers off of the broken crayons (which is an excellent task for keeping little hands busy!) and then melting them in an old mini muffin tin in the oven at 275 degrees for a few minutes.

When they were still slightly warm, I poked a hole near the top with a skewer (don't wait until they've cooled or they'll crack!), and then stuck them in the freezer for a little while (that way they pop out really easily).

The girls colored some brown kraft paper to use as wrapping paper.

We added a paper circle by punching a tiny hole near the top, and strung the two together with monofilament. Then we wrapped the gifts with jute twine.

The girls really enjoyed making crayons and designing their own wrapping paper! I may have had a little too much fun making the crayons. I had to stop myself when I was breaking perfectly good crayons so I could melt them down and see how they turned out. :) Jenny

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I've probably mentioned before that my husband is the most difficult person to buy gifts for. If he needs something, he buys it, and if he wants something, only he really knows which color, size, style, brand, gigabytes of memory etc. Every once in awhile I get lucky and he'll mention something and I buy it before he does, but it's a pretty rare event. ;) For Christmas this year I decided to take one of our favorite scenes from Harry Potter and turn it into a sort of love note/piece of art for him.

"after all this time?" "always."

Even if you're not a super nerdy, take yourselves and your two tiny children on a pilgrimage across the United States to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida type Harry Potter fan, this is still a pretty sweet sentiment. :)

I made this using my Silhouette for the words and hand cut stencils for the trees and doe. The font for the words 'after all this time' is actually the font used in the books (I know, it just keeps getting more obsessive! It's Adobe Garamond in case you're interested.) ;) To make the trees, I cut tree shapes out of brown craft paper and then cut notches in the sides so they'd look like birch trees, just because I like birch trees. I looked up a picture of a doe and drew her on the craft paper as well, and then cut her out. I glued the tree stencils down with glue stick (I would've used spray adhesive but I was out!), painted the gray around them, and then peeled the trees off after the paint was mostly dry. I glued the word stencils on and painted inside of them, once again peeling them off when the paint was dry, and lastly added the doe using the same technique. I sanded the whole thing lightly to give it a slightly distressed look.

This will go in our bedroom as soon as I decide which wall to hang it on! Quotes, song lyrics, poetry etc. make for really personal art pieces and great gifts... Valentine's Day is coming up!

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