To commemorate and celebrate the New Year, I Thought I’d share our household’s most recent meltdown: Maurya’s Crayon Craft Fiasco.
(the following pictures, though grainy, well reflect the gritty reality of the sinister side of crafting.)
Maurya and her friend Jessica dreamt it up,
and it seemed like a good idea: make cute little molds out of bake-able clay, melt crayons together, and pour the melted crayons into the clay molds. Making cute little melted crayon shapes. Cute little cute little. Why do I keep saying cute little? Maurya and Jessica are all about funk (though honestly it feels a little bit counter-intuitive to me to say funky instead of cute when I’m referring to anything Maurya’d). I should have said funky little. Well. Ok. Funky little molded shapes.
Trusting in my daughter’s quick wit and mellow temper, I focused on my own projects, allowing her free reign in the kitchen to do her funky little craft project with Jess. What could go wrong? She and Jess had bought a throwaway pot to melt the crayons in at the thrift store. They bought their own clay, their own crayons…their artistic brains are well balanced by their math/science brains. Plus they both know how to operate a gas stove.
And then Maurya said–nonchalant–from the kitchen into the family room, “Hey, Mom…why would my crayons catch on fire? What do you think I’m doing wrong?”
This after she’d poured some ignited wax into at least one of the funky little molds, apparently.
Nonchalance in the face of fire is perhaps a good thing.
I caught the nonchalant tone and nonchalantly suggested she carefully carry the flaming pot outside, before she caught the hood (and kitchen) on fire (truly I was wonderfully calm), which she did nonchalantly and without mishap, setting the flaming pot a safe distance from the house in the snow…and Frank, having heard rumors of arson and responding not quite as nonchalantly, AND in his excitement forgetting everything a boy scout is supposed to know bless his heart, threw snow on the flames, resulting in a firework show that simulated a flame thrower. Luckily everyone was clear and no one was hurt. But. We did have a fantastic funky fiery spectacle just a little prior to New Year’s. Which is good because none of us watched the ball drop in New York (or does it rise? I don’t remember).
Happy New Year!!!
Maurya and Jess were undaunted by the conflagration and finished what they had begun. They melted crayons at a lower temp and switched to cookie cutter molds, because the clay molds didn’t release well. (FYI, should you wish to do what you saw here…though it is hardly recommended).
Thanks to Jessica Johnson for clicking the pictures on Maurya’s iphone, and Maurya for editing them. What follows is entirely irrelevant, but may help soothe anyone who has issues with crisis, conflict, flames, or inexplicable craft phenomenon.
(More pictures from Maurya’s iphone. Hope they make us all happy.)
