Craft stained glass windows from melted crayons

      Remember melting crayons to create beautiful stained glass window art when you were a kid? My Sunday School teacher did this in class with us many years ago. We would shave crayons with small hand-held pencil sharpeners onto white tissue paper. Then our teachers would carefully cover our tissue and shavings with wax paper and carry the layers over to an ironing board and melt them by rubbing a hot iron over the surface of the wax paper. 

      You can actually achieve the same melted effect by using a hair dryer if you wish. I also remove the wax paper after it has cooled. This only takes seconds to accomplish and then all you need to do is cut a black template from construction paper in order to frame your melted master piece.

      This craft needs adult supervision and patience. I've used some stained glass window frames for my teaching samples that are a bit complex. Design stencils for window frames that are simpler if your students are younger.  Have the children cut out the frames before shaving and melting crayons from black construction paper if they are older than nine. 

       Since I've published this craft here, designs at Color The Bible have been uploaded for coloring pages. These can easily be adapted for pattern making of stained glass windows.

• Geometric stained glass coloring pages - simplify this one in particular.
• If your students just feel like coloring detailed pages of stained glass windows see the whole collection under this link! - As of now there are almost fifty pages.

Above you can see that a small hand-held pencil sharpener is quite adequate for shaving crayons. Remove the paper first and don't use too many dark colors for your mix, otherwise, the results can turn a bit muddy. I used the original cut templates for my teacher's sample so that I wouldn't need to cut my stencils twice. After this I then created a template from the sample that could be printed out in black and white so that my students only needed to cut out the center of the design.

Just left, you can see the stained glass window taped onto an actual window. The colors a very brilliant. I have limited my color choices to reds, oranges and yellows in order to emphasize a monochromatic palette. You may wish to teach students about color mixing or the color wheel during this lesson by requiring young students shave together particular color combinations.

More Examples of Melted Crayon Crafts:

• Color a Heart Shaped Crayon Design

Drawing Butterflies By Progressive Steps

     I have included here a series of five, butterfly, drawing exercises from an old book. In each case it is the last figure of each series of diagrams that you are striving to copy.

      Learning to draw is best when students are encouraged by multiple means of processing information. Teachers should encourage progressive diagram drawing, drawing from real life, drawing from artworks and from their imaginations. The more articulate the student, the easier it becomes for him or her to express themselves. It is difficult for art students to become articulate if their teacher is attaching too much philosophy to practice early in their pupil's development.

      Each method of drawing accesses different areas of the brain. Educators will soon discover that different students excel at different rates according to their familiarity with utilizing that particular part of their brain. Teaching art to the very young should focus primarily on the absorption of knowledge and how to use it within a wide variety of circumstance/context. 

      All artists should be given time to learn how to manipulate information without having the process judged by those art educators that teach according to current popular belief.  Do not fixate on artistic schools of thought or practice until a student is approximately sixteen or older and is able to make important choices for himself apart from your personal tastes and opinions.
      The method of drawing illustrated in the jpgs. below, is very appropriate for cartoonists or graphic designers to learn. Encourage art students to try this method of making art along with many other practices inside your classroom.

full frontal butterfly draw

Draw butterfly from side.

Draw another butterfly from side.

Smaller butterfly drawing challenge.

Last step-by-step butterfly drawing challenge.

How To Decoupage a Picture On To An Easter Egg

Here is an obvious question. "How do you decoupage a picture
or a scene onto an egg?" Obvious question, rarely answered.
Above you see a sweet example of this from a manufacturer
of Easter novelty.

Supply List:

• smallish dinner napkins in a pattern you would like to see on your Easter egg.
• egg (can be plastic or real)
• Mod Podge
• hot glue gun and hot glue to attach a ribbon on top of the egg

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Gently separate the layers of your dinner napkin. You will only be working with the printed one on top.
2. Measure the length of your egg and cut rectangular strip from the napkin or tissue paper to fit neatly around it. 
3. Now you will need to cut at regular intervals, slashes into your design. Notice how I do NOT cut all the way through the rectangle. (pictured below) I leave about an inch uncut. This uncut central part of the rectangle is the continuous, uninterrupted part of the design that wraps around the mid section of the egg. The larger your egg the wider this section will be. 
4. After cutting this napkin thus, apply Mod Podge to the surface of your egg and carefully paste down the napkin, starting first with the middle part of the design. The fringed parts of the napkin will overlap some but the design should be preserved for the most part. 
5. After cutting and gluing this first piece of the napkin, I then cut out parts of the design that I thought the most attractive from left over napkins and pasted these on the top and bottom parts of my egg where the design did not cover. This is because I used very large eggs for this project and my napkins were quite small and the wider, bottom half of my egg needed additional decoupage to cover it completely. 
6. In order for your eggs to look professional, you need to use very thin tissues for this project. This insures that the design will appear uninterrupted and hand painted. 
7. Also, I was very particular about the colors of eggs that I used for the design. Had I used dark blue or purple plastic eggs, this design would not be as attractive. The napkin is very thin and the colors will show through the glue and tissue, so be selective. The factory made egg above was yellow. The one below that I covered was pink.
8. After the egg has dried completely give it a final coat of Mod Podge.
9. Hot glue an attractive ribbon to the top of the egg if you wish to hang it.

See finished eggs with fancy pink dinner napkin decoupaged
on the plastic surfaces. You can use the same process on 
real eggs too!

Left, peal off the solid layers of napkin on the bottom; you won't need to include them in the 
process. Center, the napkin cut with fringe across the top and bottom. Right, different eggs, same
dinner napkin cut apart to give a alternative look.

See different applications of the same napkin design.

Decoupage Easter Eggs:

• Read more about this process here

Free Vintage Patterns for Easter Eggs

Painting patterns from left to right in order: An Old-Fashioned Calico Egg,
A Design Taken From Bright Ribbons, Czechoslovakia flowers in bright colors,
A row of yellow ducks on a batik egg and flowers/bow-knots from an old silk.

      Above are very old illustrated patterns for painting eggs, below are vintage patterns for sewing eggs and carrots. The egg templates include five sizes. 

       Select the size you prefer and then make a cardboard template by tracing around the size selected. 

       Cut four copies from fabric to sew together for one egg. A 1/4 seam allowance is included with the template. 

       I suggest sewing the eggs by hand instead of on the machine because the seams are so very narrow.

       After leaving an opening of one and a half inch, turn the egg right sides out and stuff tightly. Close the opening with an invisible stitch and then apply trims and fancy embroidery.

5 egg sizes. See two sizes made up in bumble bee flannel fabric at colorthebible.blogspot.com.

 

       To make fabric carrots, select the size, cut it out and trace around for the cardboard template. Cut just one triangle from orange fabric. Fold in half, sew down the side and turn right side out. Stuff with cotton filling up to the top of the carrot. 

       Sew a straight stitch around the top opening to gather it shut. Then attach a green ruffled ribbon or ruffled felt around the top gathered edges to cover and mimic the greens on top. You could also attach green lace alternatively for a folksy looking carrot.

 

See my vintage veggies in red-orange velvet with tassel tops;
 these are made with the simple pattern below.

3 carrot sizes

Very Vintage Easter Egg Designs

      This little violet dyed, Easter egg is perhaps the oldest egg I hang on my Easter tree. It was made sometime in the 1940s or 30s. My mother-in-law hung it on her childhood Easter tree. I think the lavender food dye has lasted far longer than anyone could ever had anticipated. The violets are made from molded velveteen.

• How to make vintage millinery flowers by Ilona Millinery in England
• Shaping tulle flowers with MiLena
• Anjurisa demonstrates how to use flower shaping tools 

Just Lilla shows how to make ribbon violets.

 

Enamel Easter egg containers are still as popular as they were 100 years ago!

       In the collection illustrated above at the far left on top is a vintage aluminum egg that opens to reveal a secret message and perhaps a chocolate too. It was made almost 100 years ago and belonged to my mother-in-law. The larger eggs are reproductions only manufactured within the past twenty years. I filled them with jelly beans and other sweets for our daughters to discover on Easter morning among other toys inside of their baskets.