DeLappenings: Melted Crayon Pumpkins!

Well, peeps.

With the onset of Fake Fall (any weather consistently below 90 degrees in South Texas), we’ve been spending oodles of time outdoors after school.

And I’m starting to suspect it’s had a really positive impact on the moods around our casa.

I’ll examine this hypothesis further and report back in another week or two, but for now, I’ll take any day we can manage to…

Make it through all the extra-curriculars.

Tackle all the homework.

Whip up a home-cooked dinner.

And still manage to be pleasant by bedtime.

Layer a fun Halloween project on top of all that, and life is just golden.

Granted, I might have bitten off a little more than I could chew this evening, as we’re packing up for a jaunt to Oklahoma this weekend, and I had a lot to do.

But.

I’m so glad we still crammed this project in, because it was a happy—and colorful!—one. And yet another that I’d kept in the back of my mental catalogue for quite some time.

I give you…Melted Crayon Pumpkins!

Super coolio, huh??

So.

Following the major success of our String Art Pumpkins of last week, I wanted to tackle something extra-vibrant and more simplistic. Though this one did require a bit of patience.

First off: I purchased a large box of crayons and let the kiddos each pick about 8 to 10 colors.

Next was the task of unwrapping the paper from the crayons. A bit of a challenge that produced these adorable concentration faces, ha.

Meanwhile…poor Chica, who doesn’t like decisions where there’s no wrong answer. Give her 64 crayons to choose from, and it’s going to be impossible for her to narrow it now. ;)

Conversely…Chicklet snagged her cool-color hues without hesitation. I lurv how their projects always represent a bit of their individual personalities.

Next up: busting out the hot glue gun to secure the crayons in whatever pattern the kiddos preferred.

We actually broke the crayons in half, as we didn’t really need the full bit for these smaller pumpkins. And lemme tell ya what a big but simple joy it is to tell your kids to break all the crayons. With purpose. Try it sometime. Ha.

Little Man decided to get a bit creative with his crayon placement and I applauded his originality and I totally understood what he was hoping to achieve…but more on the results in a moment.

Now.

The fun bit.

Busting out that hair dryer! (And, no, this is not a plug for Conair, despite the prominent brand placement, ha.)

Needless to say, it became evident within about a minute of the heating process that some of the drippy bits of the crayon were going to splatter with style, due to the force of the hair dryer.

So we quickly moved things outside (more outdoors time!) so we didn’t have to stress at all about the blast radius.

I’d say the melting began within about two minutes of direct heat. And each pumpkin probably required a solid 7-8 minutes to melt all the crayons entirely flat in a full-coverage drip.

I’m sure you could get really sophisticated with a fancier hair dryer, or more targeted aim, but we just sort of went for heat everywhere. And we rotated the pumpkins a few times when we thought they needed a bit more attention in a particular area.

I adored Chicklet’s chosen colors as they melted. And she was so sweet to report that she usually likes Chica’s and Little Man’s finished projects better than her own, but not today! Ha. She was so happy with her choices and her results. Woohoo!

Next up…Little Man:

Now.

The problem we ran in to with his was likely due to that sideways placement of the crayons.

He was hoping to force the colors to merge in a really nifty way, which they did. But…unfortunately, they just didn’t drip as naturally in those pumpkin grooves, so it made things a bit more difficult—and for whatever reason, the hot glue beneath the crayons even started to show up, which made him unhappy.

Boooo.

So we had to tackle his in two waves. One to melt the original crayons, then another to remove the exposed hot glue, and then layer on some patchwork crayon bits. There are no mistakes in art!

Next up: Chica! And her traditional rainbow color scheme.

Classic and beautiful. By then, we were pros. (Also, please note the massive mess on my pumpkin placemats. I haven’t even begun tackle that removal, ha. But I’m thinking it might involve heat!)