Melted Crayon Art with a Disney Twist!

If you're new to Pinterest, chances are you've seen melted crayon art. It's a bunch of crayons lined up in a row, melted onto a canvas. It's a fun rainy-day activity for your kids. SunflowerStoryTime shows the basics of how it's done in this post but I decided to put my own little twist on it. After seeing "Saving Mr. Banks", Mary Poppins had been on my mind and I decided to incorporate her in the design. I just Google-imaged "Mary Poppins silhouette", picked one I liked, and cut it out.

You'll need the basics to make this:

1. Crayons
2. A hot glue gun and glue (I used 1 stick)
3. A hair dryer
4. A canvas
5. A silhouette (optional)

I recommend you remove all the labels from the crayons, though it's certainly up to you. I'm a little OCD and if all the labels weren't perfectly lined up, it would have bothered me so I figured it was easier to remove them altogether. Depending on the size of the canvas, you'll want to lay out all the crayons first before gluing anything down, so you know just how many to use. I ended up using 43 crayons, which was almost the entire box!

Next, take your hot glue, glue right onto the canvas, and then place your crayon on top. I don't recommend doing it the other way around because the glue doesn't stick well and ends up melting the crayon.

Once all your crayons are glued down, take your canvas to an area that you're not afraid of getting wax on. I decided to lean the canvas against the bathroom wall with paper towel underneath, which was a good idea because the wax melted all the way to the bottom and I did get some wax on the tiles by accident. So if you're near expensive furniture, carpet, or animals, you might want to relocate.

Keep the hair dryer roughly 12" above the crayons and after a couple minutes, they will begin to melt. Be careful when moving the hair dryer around or you'll start to spray wax on your walls!

Once you're done melting your wax, take your silhouette and hot glue it to the canvas. I made the mistake of not leaving enough room for Mary so she's a bit cramped in the corner.

Also, if you put a paper towel under the canvas and the melted wax touched the paper towel, you may have some of the paper towel stuck to the bottom of the wax so gently remove that. However, I kinda like it - wherever you sit the canvas, it'll looks like the wax is on that surface!

And voila! Your work of art is complete!

TOTAL COSTS: About $12
$4.11 for a 14x18 canvas panel from Utrecht
$5.99 for 64 Crayola crayons from Vons
Hot glue gun and hair dryer already on hand


TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 1 hour
40 minutes to remove 43 crayon labels
11 minutes to hot glue crayons to canvas
9 minutes to melt wax

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 2 out of 5
It's not difficult, per se, but if you're not careful, you could easily get wax everywhere and the clean-up would not be fun. So the one thing you should keep in mind is how close your blow dryer is to the canvas and how many Lysol wipes you have on hand for cleaning up!

Disney's Veggie Mickey Mouse and Fruity Kermit the Frog

It's the new year and many people are turning to healthier eating for themselves and their families. I don't know about you but eating fruits and veggies... not exactly my strong suit. However, if they're shaped like friendly Disney characters, how can you NOT want to eat them?? These posts come to us from Spoonful.com and would be perfect for Disney-themed parties or just a healthy afternoon snack!

#1 - Mickey Mouse Tuna Tomatoes

Here's what you'll need:

* Tomatoes
I bought really big ones, but I recommend getting smaller tomatoes on the vine because
1. they'll be easier to eat and
2. the recipe filled up both tomatoes!

* Tuna

* Celery

* Mayonnaise

* Dill (that one spice on your spice rack you've probably never used... or maybe that's just me!)

* Black Olives

* Scallions (otherwise known as green onions)


Step 1: Combine all the ingredients into a bowl and mix them up

Step 2: Cut off the top of the tomato and scoop out the insides. I found it easiest to cut around and then cut the insides into quarters before scooping out the rest.

Step 3: Scoop the tuna mixture into the tomatoes and add sliced olives onto the sides to act as Mickey's "ears". And voila! Eat and enjoy!

TOTAL COSTS: About $12
$2.44 for the tomatoes
$  .99 for green onions/scallions
$1.49 for celery
$  .99 for 1 can of tuna
$1.99 for black olives
$3.99 for mayonnaise
Dill already on hand in my spice rack

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: About 25 minutes

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 1 out of 5
This is really easy but I wouldn't recommend kids help, as there's a lot of cutting/slicing involved!


#2 - Kermit's Green Apples

Here's another that requires a lot of slicing and dicing but it's very easy to put together (and even easier to devour!). All you need is:

*A red apple

*A green apple

*A marshmallow

*An edible marker (or, if you don't have one like me, you can use a regular marker and then remove the marshmallows when it comes time to eating it, since they're not very healthy anyway!)

Step 1: Cut your apple in half and put one half away until the end

Step 2: Cut into the apple on either side at an angle, so as to form the face of Kermit

Step 3: Next, you can either eyeball it or draw a smile on the apple and cut around it. Then scoop out some of apple to make the mouth.

Step 4: Take the red apple, cut a slice out, and then use the green smile as a template to cut down the size of the red smile. Make sure most of the white of the apple is cut off the smile, so it's easier to put inside the green apple.

  

Step 5: Cut a marshmallow in half and draw on the pupils. The original post says to cut into 4 quarters but that makes the eyes very small in relation to the size of the apple. By cutting them in half, the sticky part of the marshmallow will act like a glue when you stick them on. I found the older the marshmallows, the flatter the "eyeballs" were, which wasn't a good thing.

Step 6: Take the other apple half and cut small triangular pieces. I found it was best to cut off half of the white apple piece, otherwise they were too big (see photo below - the two slices on the left were cut in half and the two on the right were not).

Step 7: Put on a plate, grab some peanut butter, and you're all set!

TOTAL COSTS: About $5
$2.33 for apples
$2.98 for marshmallows

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: About 25 minutes

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 1 out of 5
There's nothin' to it - just cut, cut again, cut some more, and you're done!