Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Recycled crayons

Well, first things first.

Since I only had one entry for the My Memory Suites give away, Libbie is our winner. Congratulations!! You're going to have a lot of fun with this software. It's addicting.


I had seen a picture of this, but didn't have any of the instructions to go with it, so I was just winging it.

I dug out our tub of old crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc. The girls and I pulled out most of the old and broken crayons, peeled the paper off, and broke them into small pieces.


I had bought two different silicone molds at Target in the dollar section (although they were more than a dollar  lol) to use. One was a gingerbread man and the other a Christmas tree.


I decided that I wanted my recycled crayons to be thick so that they wouldn't break easily with little hands trying to color with them. So we filled the molds to the top.

We had to refill that little yellow bowl several times to get all the molds full.

I put them in a preheated oven at 225F. I really don't know how long they were in there because I got started cleaning the dinner dishes and forgot about them. lol I remembered when we were able to smell the wax.

This is how they looked when they came out.

The wax mixed together a little more when I was taking them out just from the movement.

And here's the final products.


I'm happy with the way they turned out. I had to make a second batch because my girls took off with most of the first one. I'm going to send one of each shape along with a Christmas coloring book to my nieces and nephew.

Some things I learned.....

The cheap crayons are easier to peel.

But, some of the cheap crayons won't melt well. There were a few green crayons that didn't melt no matter how long I left them in there.

A shorter melting time would probably keep the colors from mixing together quite so much.

The smaller the crayon gets, the harder it is to break.

It was a fun project for the kids and I to do together and now I've used up almost all of the old, yucky, broken crayons.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The results look fabulous! I like the idea that you made thick shapes so they won't break easily. Must be something in the air because I just posted a project that involves crayons as well. Look forward to trying yours!