Making Rainbows

Happy New Year, everyone!

We have been in rainbow land here at The Byron life HQ as we count the sleeps until Miss Melli’s 6^th birthday. She requested a rainbow disco party and I’m not sure who is enjoying the preparations more – me or the kids! Something about rainbows and colour and crafting for a party has seen me spending ridiculous amounts of time Googling things and making Pinterest boards and making rainbow craft and planning rainbow food… if you should ever consider a rainbow party I think it’s fair to warn you that it can be addictive fun – and this is from someone who swears by the “keep it simple and affordable” rule for my kids’ parties.  Imagine what I would be like with a bigger budget. Rainbowzilla? Even Alex has caught rainbow-fever, looking up blogs with cake-pop recipes (sorry Alex, but I did warn you I’d blog that!).

First rainbow project: The girls and I have been making rainbow crayons, an idea that has been circulating the internets for years, but one I had yet to try. This is a creative way to recycle old crayons pieces, however we turned it into an “upcycling” project by using new crayons to create some fun home-made party favours.

The little ones loved this activity and were utterly focused on peeling off the wrappers of more than 120 small crayons and then sorting them into matching colours. Maddi was intrigued when I starting breaking the crayons into little pieces and then put them in the mini-muffin cases to cook. She wanted to eat the end results, and they do look good enough to eat,  but I wouldn’t recommend it.

The processs is so easy: peel off the labels, break into pieces, fill your muffin tins (or use a different shaped mold), cook in an oven until melted then cool in freezer until hard. The cooking part, at about 200C, took around 10minutes.

We all love the way they turned out. There’s something magical about it all; the surprise element in popping out the hardened crayon from the tin and discovering the rainbow swirls underneath. And they feel lovely and smooth… The only disappointing part of this whole process was running out of crayons, but I consoled myself with taking a thousand rainbow-crayon photos… Yep, Rainbowzilla!

Ok, now I’m off to make more rainbow things. Today the rainbow bunting from Cam’s CurlyPops shop arrived so that will be the next project.

Hope your new year has started well. Do you go a bit crazy over your kid’s parties sometimes? Have you made rainbow crayons before?

x

Megan