Monday, November 22, 2010

update for paige's class...

tonight we finished the crayons for paige's kindergarten class. you can see my tutorial here or read the original from Diary of a Preppy Mom here. from 5 boxes of 64 crayons acquired at the dollar store we ended up with enough crayons so that each of the 25 students could have 4 crayons and there were 6 or 7 left over. we sorted the crayons by color so that there wouldn't be duplicates in each package and then put them in favor bags found in the dollar section at target (love the target!)


i cut pieces of carstock just a bit larger than a couple of my christmas stamps, wrote each child's name on the front under the stamp and then had paige write 'from paige' on the backs of the cards at 5 years old she's not really used to writing that much and, being in kindergarten she's still figuring out how to write in a straight line and making the letters the right direction (as you can see, the 'g' in paige is backwards but that's what makes it adorable) then we punched a hole in the card, put a ribbon through it and tied it around the bag. even though there was quite a bit of time involved, around 45 minutes per dozen including peeling wrappers, baking and cooling which had to be completed before the next batch could start, they end up pretty easy and give a lot of bang for the buck. Here's the final break down on cost (so crazy cheap)

5 boxes of 64 crayons from dollar tree - $5
one wilton silicone mini tree pan from michaels - $6 ($10-40% off with coupon)
2 bags of 20 celophane favor bags from target's dollar section -$2
ribbon left over from presents last christmas -$0
stamped gift tags from cardstock on hand - $0

grand total -$13 or just under 50 cents per kid

here are some tips and ideas in closing:
  • you could easily use the same amount of supplies but only give each child 2 crayons and give twice as many kids presents if your child has a bigger class.
  • i made a couple of crayons from only two crayons instead of 3 and they turned out a bit thinner than i wanted but still thick enough to be usable and i would imagine that your kid's crayon box/bucket/can/etc has enough broken and partial crayons that you may not have to purchase as many but i wouldn't mix brands within each tree just in case for some reason they don't reharden consistently
  • i would highly reccomend two silicone pans if you're going to be making a bigger batch but if you're doing things around the house it's pretty easy to switch them around and get it taken care of
  • make sure you have two cookie sheets so that when you take the melted crayons out of the oven you can transfer them to a different pan and put them in the fridge to lessen the cooling time
  • you could easily print some coloring pages, even resize them to 1/2 or quarter page in something easy like ms word and give them with the crayons (i think they'd be super cute with full size coloring sheets rolled into a tube (like a diploma), tied with the ribbon before it's tied around the bag of crayons, it could be a super cute stocking stuffer too
  • peeling wrappers off of cheap crayons is super easy if you loosen the whole seam of the wrapper before trying to peel the rest off
  • little bits of crayon wax flake when breaking crayons, be sure to clean your cookie sheets really weel and if you wipe it off the top of the stove before it has a chance to cool it's not messy

that's all for tonight, happy crafting!!

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