Valentine's Day is right around the corner and today I thought I would share my "you color my WORLD" Crayon Heart Valentines, made with the new Sweetheart die collection from Lifestyle Crafts and heart shaped crayons made with melted Crayola crayons.

Isn't that fun? I am always a fan of homemade Valentines for the kiddos classes every year. It's also a bit of a challenge to make valentines that are fun, colorful and easy on their sugar intake for the day.

I know this isn't a new idea by far… My neighbor made these heart shaped crayons several years ago after finding this fun idea in Family Fun magazine, but I thought it would be a perfect fit for the new Sweetheart Nesting Hearts from Lifestyle Crafts. Cutting the hearts was super simple using my Epic three in one tool from Lifestyle Crafts. The Epic tool cuts, embosses and can create beautiful letterpress projects as well.

But I am getting ahead of myself! Before we can make the cards we need to make the heart shaped crayons…

You will need to gather all the old crayons in the house… if your house is anything like mine, that won't be a problem. You can also purchase new crayons as well. I will have to admit, the new crayons were easier to remove the labels from. I used an X-ACTO knife to make a slit down the length of the crayon to easily remove the labels. The older crayons took a little more coaxing.

Once you've removed all of the labels, break the crayons into small pieces. The smaller the better…

I also found that separating them into color families made for the best looking crayons, but that is completely up to you!

You will need to use a heart shaped silicon baking mold to melt your crayons in. I found mine at Michaels in the baking section and it worked like a dream. The girls and I decided that we wanted our crayons to be a little glittery so we added about 1/2 a teaspoon of silver glitter to the bottom of the baking mold. Then we filled the baking mold with the crayons about 1/3 full. The mold I used was pretty deep so depending on what you use you will have to play around with this.

Place in your oven that has been pre-heated to 300 degrees and baked for 15 minutes. The crayons will become completely liquefied so be careful when you pull them out of the oven. Carefully place them on the counter to cool. You want to make sure that you don't move them around too much and mix the colors more than you want. Wait for about 20 minutes or until the crayon is solid again and then gently remove it from the mold and let cool completely.

I made 57 hearts with the Wilton Mini Heart Mold using approximately 200 crayons.

Now it's time to pull out your Epic Tool to make the heart shaped cards for you to place your new crayons on. I used two different dies from the new Sweetheart line for this project. The Nesting Heart and the Nesting Scallop Hearts work beautiful for this card.

I decided that since I wanted the focus to be on the crayons I used a basic white watercolor paper for the base of the card.

Once I cut out the heart shapes, I used my rolling alphabet stamp to create the fun saying on the card. "Valentine… you color my WORLD" I just LOVE that look!!

Of course I had to dress up the heart crayons with some Divine Twine from Whisker Graphics. I just wrapped the hearts randomly and tied with a bow or made little twine bundles for the decoration…

This is such a fun project to do with the kiddos. My girls and I had ball gabbing while we were prepping the crayons. After that it was a perfect opportunity to have a color class while we created our crayon concoctions. From start to finish this is an easy and elegant Valentine treat that your little ones {or big ones} will love to share with their friends this Valentine's Day!!

Come back tomorrow I have another fun Anthro inspired Valentine project made with my Sweetheart dies from Lifestyle Crafts!

Here are some more WhipperBerry Lifestyle Craft projects…

Party favors, bakery boxes & bubble party favors