Valentine hearts are full of sunshine

These little hearts were super fun to make. We saw them in a magazine a few years ago, Martha Stewart, I think, and decided this would be the perfect holiday decoration for our front door since that window receives the first days light. It's amazing to watch them transform right before your eyes from plain, white paper and then multi colored, multi faceted prisms. When they are out of the light they are pale in color but the moment the light hits them they shine radiant colors from the various colors of melted wax from within.

To make these hearts

you will need::

crayon pieces for melting

vegetable peeler or small grater to make crayon shavings

waxed paper

heart templates of various sizes

pencil

scissors

string

hole punch or large needle



To start, cut a piece of 12-16 inch waxed paper to a length of 32 inches. The wider and longer the more opportunity for heart shapes but also the more space to fill with your crayon shavings. It's up to you how many hearts you'd like to make and how much wax you have available to use. Our piece of waxed paper gave us 13 hearts (we had room to cut about 5 more but are going to wait and use them for something else!).

Next, fold your your paper length wise to form a crease. Shave your crayon pieces over one half of the paper. You don't need to fill it so full but include a nice variety of color to create a little depth and dimension to your finished heart.

Fold your paper length wise again, using the crease that you formed before. Then, close off the three open sides by folding them over. This will prevent hot wax from leaking all over your work space and iron. Our iron is used for crafting (mostly) so I did not put anything over the paper once I began to iron. However, if you've got an iron that you wouldn't want to risk getting wax on I suggest covering your bottom work surface with newspaper or an old towel as well as the top of your wax filled paper. Just in case!

Once you've gone over your folded paper a few times with your hot iron you will notice the wax melting and spreading around the paper beneath. Once your sure the wax is completely melted turn your iron off and set it aside. Let your paper cool a minute or so. Now you can trace your heart shapes all over the paper and cut them out!

Lastly, we popped holes in the top of our hearts and strung some string through them at varying lengths. We then attached another piece of string the width of the window on our front door and tied our hearts randomly from this string, creating a beautiful heart mobile that radiated bursts of color with the daylight shining through them.

Wishing you a lovely Sunday full of color and sunshine xoxo