More Butterfly Fun

Here's a little more about those butterflies I made for Maggie's party. After finishing the party flock, I still had plenty of melted-crayon paper left over, so I made another colorful flock and hung them in my own windows. It feels more like spring already!

To be honest, it's rather a messy project - particularly the part that involves grating a bunch of crayons into colorful piles of shavings that are full of static electricity and stick to everything...but also the part that involves arranging the shavings between sheets of waxed paper and melting them with an iron. My parents graciously put up with me doing the grating and ironing at their house last Sunday afternoon when Nick and I spent the day there for Easter. After brunch and two egg hunts, I got down to business with some stubs of old crayons out on the back sunporch.

As they watched me labor over the kitchen grater, my family kept bringing me other implements to try. My mom offered up a chopper that she uses for nuts. My dad went down to his workshop and returned with a wood file. The grater seemed the most efficient in the end. By the time I was done, I'd turned it rainbow-colored. Also, Maisie had scattered one of the piles of crayon shavings across the rug, and I was still vacuuming when my aunt and uncle arrived for Easter dinner. Luckily, I think I managed to clean up all the messes satisfactorily and produce some acceptable results, too.

Back at home the next day, I used an old butterfly calendar as inspiration for making templates in a variety of butterfly shapes.

Then I laid the templates on the paper, traced around them, and cut out the butterflies. Here's what was left after lots of tracing and cutting:

And here's more of the finished effect - for anyone else who, like us, might be suffering from a late spring and would benefit from a burst of color!

P.S. Mom and Dad, there are some butterflies winging their way to you right now via the postal service to brighten your windows and thank you for not minding the mess!