Handcrafted Valentines

We had so much fun this weekend making our Valentines!  It is the first time in several years that we went completely handmade.  Hooray!

There were SO MANY great ideas floating around out there, we couldn't help but try a few.
All of the boys helped out.  Zack and Rowan peeled and broke up all of the crayons for our recycled crayon hearts and stars.  They also signed and wrote their friends names on the Valentines they will give out.
Rowan dressed up as Darth Vader for his "boy" Valentines and gave me several good light saber weilding poses to choose from!  A huge thanks to Kaysi at Keeping it Simple for this idea!

Avery and Zander, well, they peeled a few crayons, swiped some markers and the bouncy balls and ended up sitting in their chairs smooshing playdough while we continued to craft away.
Avery will be giving his friends some fishy valentines.  This cute idea came from  Juliann at Faboolous.

And  Zander's should put a bounce in his Valentines' steps! *corny* We made sure to use balls that wouldn't fit in curious little mouths...as Mommy always says, "No choking allowed!"  This idea came from Danyelle at Dandee.

The recycled crayons came out great!  The last time I tried this it was an utter disaster.  This time I decided to use the microwave instead of the oven.  It took a little bit of trial and error *hint: don't try to melt crayons in squeeze bottles the way you can melt chocolate, the squeeze bottle will melt before the crayons do!*

For the hearts I melted broken crayons directly into a heart shape candy mold (You aren't supposed to use these molds in the microwave and it only lasted through 3 rounds before it went caput, but by then, we had all the hearts we needed.)  And, as Rowan exclaimed, "Ooooo...they came out shiny!"  The idea for these came from several pins on pinterest, none of which linked back to anyone to give credit to!

For the stars, I used a silicone pan that has small star shaped molds.

The silicone stood up to the abuse, although it retained some of the color from the crayons and is now forever doomed to live the life of a "crafts only" pan...no more star shaped brownies.

The stars did not come out shiny like the hearts, but they're still pretty awesome!

The messages and the boys' signatures are on the back of the cardstock.  Credit for the stars idea goes to me.  *wink*
I think we ended up with a collection of Valentines that will make their friends and classmates smile.  And hopefully my favorite little Valentines will feel great joy giving something they made themselves!