More fun with crayons

We had so much fun with the last crayon craft that we decided to try another one.  It involved melting the crayons again, but this time we used crayon shavings and an iron.  

I told the kids to make a doodle on their paper, because I was thinking that they could put certain shaved crayon colors in different sections of their doodle.  If you try this, don't waste your time with this step.  The crayons ran everywhere when they melted and didn't stay where we hoped they would.  Also, the colors mixed anyway, so why bother separating them? 

After the first few, we caught on.  We just took the mixed, shaved crayon in small pinches and sprinkled them all over our paper

When we were satisfied with the amount of sprinkled crayon, we put wax paper over the paper and ironed it on low heat to melt the crayon shavings.  It was cool to see how the colors blended.  (by the way, a good project for younger kids would be to spread a thin layer of glue over the paper and let them pinch and sprinkle to their hearts content.  Then let it dry and hang it up [no heat or melting!]  The sprinkles alone on the paper looked pretty cool)

Calvin's pretty colors!

Dev's pretty colors!

If I ever do this project again, I would worry less about making a shape for them to "fill in." I would also use lower heat on my iron.  I turned it down to it's lowest setting after awhile, and it worked much better (didn't melt the shavings so fast, so they didn't run all over.), and I would also just "press and lift" my iron instead of dragging it all over the paper.  Press and lift helped keep the crayon in its place. 
It was a lot of fun.  Try it and let me know how it worked for you!