I have read about recycling crayons into new, rainbow colored crayons in at least a couple of different magazines. Oh, and then there are about four posts about it from blogs that I saved too. But, I still put off doing it.
Finally, about a week or so ago, I spent part of a morning (while the boys were working on school) peeling paper off of broken crayons. I let the kids break the crayons up even more, and then throw them in a bowl together.
Shhh...don't tell the crayon police. But, we even broke up some crayons that weren't broken, but whose colors we just really liked.
We filled our mini heart muffin cups with the broken crayons while our oven preheated to 275 degrees. The kids loved filling up the cups.
On a side note, in the future, I would be careful about putting too many dark crayons in the same cup together. Too many dark colors together kind of overtook the crayon.
We left them in the oven for about 10 minutes. I kept an eye on them throughout. Here they are partially melted.
Let the crayons cool down before you try to pop them out of the cups. (You can actually melt them in paper cups as well -- I just wanted mine to be heart shaped.)
Enjoy your cute new crayons! Maybe even share them with some friends, depending on how many you made. (In Family Fun Magazine, the craft actually went along with putting these mini heart crayons on homemade Valentines.)
7 comments:
What a great idea! I have so many of the non-Crayola ones you get free from restaurants. That would be fun to recycle them. Thanks for the great idea.
Wow, those are so cute! I've seen this idea carried out before, but not in such a whimsical way. We've got a million busted-up crayons lying around here. I will have to try this. Thanks for sharing!
Those turned out really cute. I went so far, one time, as to actually buy a Crayola Crayon Maker, an Easy-Bake-Oven-like device that makes cute little crayon-shaped new crayons out of your old broken crayons. It even came complete with do-to-yourself wrappers for the crayons.
We never used it. Isn't that a shame? Maybe we'll give the bake 'em in the oven method a try soon. Goodness knows we have enough broken crayons around here.
What a cute project, I really need to try this!
We did this in a muffin tin once. I was boring and in a Montessori way had them sort same colors into each "muffin", no rainbow mix. We still have the chunky, circular crayons and the kids loved watching them melt.
Love the heart shape, thanks for sharing.
Looking for a few good ideas for homemade gifts. These look great. With only teenagers left at home, I can't bear to say good bye to the old crayons. This will make it a lot easier and more fun to pass them on!
I love this idea! :)
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