And anyone with kids knows that they don’t like to use the broken ones. They are pretty much useless.. Unless of course, you can make them NEW AGAIN! So today I’m going to share a super quick tutorial on how you can give new life to old crayons using nothing more than a thrift store cookie mold. Plus this process uses up a LOT of broken crayons.. which is great.
Supplies:
Foil lined oven safe bowls (or you could use a muffin tin)
Old Crayons
Cookie or chocolate mold (Larger sizes mean larger new crayons, but also require more broken crayons)
Process:
First thing we did was gather up the crayons and lined a couple of pyrex bowls with tin foil. You will need one bowl for each color or color family (for example we mixed together all the blues, but if you wanted to do light blue and dark blue you would need a separate bowl for each one)
Next step: Peel all the crayons, break them into little pieces and sort them by color. This is a great exercise for little kids. We had to decide which colors would go best together, and sort them into lights and darks. It took LONG time however, to peel all the crayons. You have been warned.
Next I collected all the bowls in a cake pan and placed it in the oven at 350 degrees.
It took longer than I thought it would to melt the crayons, and the cheap freebie giveaway crayons we got from restaurants took a LOT longer than the nice Crayola ones, but eventually they all melted. I used disposable spoons to stir the mixtures and make sure all the color was consistent.
I had found this old aluminum cookie mold at the thrift store and it was perfect for this project. The aluminum gets really cold and the crayons solidify quick. Plus they are pretty large in size. You could also use candy molds, but they tend to be much smaller. If you don’t have any molds, you can make circles by allowing the the wax to cool in the bottom of a muffin tin, but that was not the most exciting shape in the world.
I poured the hot wax into the molds and let it set at room temperature before placing the whole sha-bang in the freezer. The wax contracted and popped right out.. and VIOLA:
I think they came out darn cute if I do say so myself. It would have been fun to do a few more colors, but that would have required more starter crayons, and we just used up what we hand on hand.
We had to test them out of course, and they do in fact write on paper. (Phew!) And my favorite part: There are a lot less broken crayons floating around my house. Now we only have seven large ones. SCORE!
