4th of July "Confetti Crayon" Stars

Need a last minute 4th of July craft to do with your kids (or...for you to do by yourself)? I've got just the thing for you today. Check this out.

The Original Pin

http://www.freepreschoolcrafts.com/wax-paper-crayon-star-hangings-for-4th-of-july/

All that takes is crayon shavings between wax paper, followed by ironing. Simple. You could make a ton of these and string them as a banner, turn them into ornaments (as seen above), sprinkle them on a table as decor, or use them to decorate cards or signs. 

Or can you? Are they really that simple? Kathy gave this one a go. "I saw this on Pinterest and thought it would be really cute to make a bunch with my kids for the 4th of July. First of all, it took 45 minutes to shave 3 crayons with scissors and made a huge mess. However, I had two cheap crayons and one Crayola crayon. The Crayola was much easier to work with and didn't leave as much of a waxy mess all over me. (Sorry - I didn't think to take a picture of the mess). Anyway, once I was finally done with that, I called my kids over and they sprinkled the crayon shavings over the stars. I followed the directions on how to assemble the stars exactly as written on the site. The directions don't say how warm the iron needs to be so I put it on a medium heat. I pressed the iron on the newspaper for about 4 seconds. I lifted the paper and this is what I found underneath."

The Pinstrosity

"Not exactly what I was looking for. I wasn't ready to give up yet. I tried everything again but this time I put the iron on the lowest setting."

"A little better, but still not perfect. I tried one last time but this time I only held the iron on for 2 seconds."

"Better - but still not like the picture. I did notice that this last time the white stayed chunky like in the original pin. I realized that the white crayon was the Crayola. I have a feeling that this might work if I use all Crayola crayons instead of the waxy cheap ones. That will have to be an experiment for another day because my kids lost interest a long time before I did!"

This really intrigued me, so I of course had to try it out. 

1. I got my wax paper and cut out two star shapes, and the realized that was going to be really hard to line them up and iron them, so I then decided to test out not cutting out the star shape until the ironing had been completed. So I had 2 star shapes and a rectangle. I placed them on the newspaper (as directed in the original pin). 
2. I went to work shaving the crayons. I could find a red and a blue Crayola crayon, but only a CraZ Art white crayon, so that's what I used. As I wasn't making a ton of stars, I just shaved a little of each crayon onto the wax paper. 
3. I carefully placed and lined the top star onto the bottom star, and boy it was a pain in the neck to get lined up and stay lined up. For the rectangle, I just folded one side over the other. I then laid the other sheet of newspaper over the top. That blew my top star off again and I had to painstakingly line them back up. 
4. With my iron on it's lowest setting, I made about 4 swipes over each area. I opened it up to find the stars had misaligned some (not much though) while ironing and that 4 swipes was too many.  
5. So I started fresh with a new rectangle, shaved the crayon onto it, and ironed it. This time I only made one pass with the iron, so the iron was on the star for maybe a second. I didn't hold it on, I just swiped the iron over the top from left to right (or bottom to top, I don't remember...either way it was moving). Just one swipe was enough to adhere the two wax paper sheets together and sorta melt the crayon shavings.  
6. I cut star shapes out of the two rectangles. 

Below you will see, from left to right, the star that misaligned (starting with two star shapes). The middle star had 4 swipes of the iron. The right star had one swipe of the iron. 

My Test Results

I'm pretty proud of those star shapes! Not bad for freehanding it with scissors. Still a little wonky, but man you should see my freehand cut stars from about 2 years ago. I've worked hard on improving, lol. 

The white CraZart crayon did seem to melt faster, but with just one swipe of the iron you could still see it just fine as it didn't melt and spread too fast. So Crayola does work better, but it's not imperative that you use Crayola.

So if you want the confetti look, I suggest putting the iron on it's lowest setting and only making one pass over the area. If you want a "firecracker" look, make a couple of iron swipes over the area. Either way though, I definitely suggest cutting out the star shape after you iron. Much much easier!