What do you do with all those little bits of crayons that are left lying at the bottom of any kids crayon box?
If your crayon box looks anything like ours…full of half used bits and pieces, then it’s time for a spring clean!
We recycled our old crayons into new ones, which are not only good looking, but great for gifts!!
First we sorted all the colors. Crayons are not absolute colors, so if they melt into each other they don’t really blend – blue and yellow crayons are not going to turn out green, they are going to go brown! So try and use like colors, this works well!
Then we made sure all the crayons were ‘clean.’ We did this by using a potato peeler and shaved off all the brown dirty bits – and threw those away, they just make a yucky mess!
Then we chopped and shaved all the crayons into little pieces. I chopped with a knife – be careful of your fingers, crayons are slippery little things!!! Emma shaved bits off with the peeler.
We filled our silicone mould and baking tins about two thirds of the way.
Once all the holes were full, we popped it into the oven at 100°C for about 15 minutes.
We watched very carefully and took it out the moment they were melted.
*Tip: we made crayons in other shapes and forms – using silicone moulds and a regular cup cake pan, it worked perfectly to, and after pushing the bottom of the pan they all just slid out! The only thing that varied is the cooking time, in the pans the crayons melted faster – as the metal gets hotter than silicone, so just watch your crayons carefully as the size and material does make a difference!
Once they were cooled – we left them in overnight – we peeled them out of the mould and got drawing!!
