Crayon Project

I decided that I'd had enough of the junk crayons: the pieces of broken crayons, the crayons that the kids brought home from various restaurants, the box of crayons that were so worn down that ther were not enjoyable to use anymore (b/c we all know how exciting a new box of crayons really is), etc. And instead of just throwing them away, I looked for a way to recycle them. There are many possible options that I read about online from using a double boiler and candy molds to muffin tins in the oven to dixie cups in the microwave. I tried a candy mold in the oven on a very low temperature but that didn't work so I decided on this method. The kids and I peeled all the paper off the crayons and broke them in to smaller bits and then somewhat artfully arranged them in the pan and into the oven they went.


At first I was a little dissappointed to see that the colors were running together to make a mostly brownish mess but we continued with the process, removing them from the oven to let them cool and harden up a little bit. Then we used cookie cutters to cut out fun shapes from the pan.


I placed them in the freezer to completely harden them and then the shapes popped out easily from the surrounding crayon. I was very pleased to see that the colors settled separately on the bottom of the pan and the colors were bright and cheerful. We broke the scraps up into little chunks, which are great multi-colored crayons and the shapes can be used either as crayons or ornaments or whatever other ideas you might come up with.


These will be a great present for the kids to share with their friends at Christmas as well...