Just in case you are one of these people organizing this week or you are waiting till actual spring or time for school to be out this is a perfect way to recycle your old crayons. By old crayons I mean these broken pieces you find in the couch cushions, under beds and maybe even in the fridge. Yes these can be reused just by being melted. Wax crayons are nothing more then wax, hardening agent and pigment therefore can be reused often. You can even mold them into fun shapes, but be certain to read the rest of this post to do it correctly.
First you will need to take all your crayon pieces and clean them from paper, stickers or whatever else you may find stuck to them
You can use up your nails and hours of time trying to peel them or you can use a sharp object to cut a line through and remove with ease
Ta Da
Choose muffin tins or silicone baking tins, preheat oven to 250 deg. These really cute ones I got from IKEA for a buck each. Fun right?
Place the broken pieces in the tins and bake
You can certainly tell that today Mama run out of coffee, or in the words of Forrest Gump “stupid is as stupid does”.
I totally forgot that these were ice cube trays not silicone baking molds, like these. It didn’t take long to realize that something other then wax was also melting. If I drank a pot of coffee before 9 am like I usually do, I would have melted the wax on the stove top and pour them into molds, definately not put plastic in an oven like a doo doo bird. I guess I could have also used fun candy molds.
Once they cooled off they looked really great and were fun to use. They can be made in every shape possible, even graduation caps. Not that a graduate needs crayons, unless you are graduating from preschool. Anyway, I am on my way to buy some coffee, before anything else happens.
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These are so cute! I have a million pieces of crayons in a jar that I have been holding onto since my daughter started actively using crayons. I always mean to make something with them but never do. I like the idea of placing them in the ice cube, I mean baking moulds, it’ll cut down on the amount of wax stuck to my pots. Even though there was a mishap, did you spray the moulds with anything first? I have silicone baking moulds and rarely do for regular muffins.
How brilliant is this idea? I love that you can remake all the broken crayons into something else.
And don’t worry, I would have confused my ice cube trays with my baking trays too…easy error!
Hope you had a wonderful weekend Kathy!
Awesome idea. I never thought about using those molding trays. You can also melt the crayons on the stove in a pan and pour them into the molds. I haven’t tried it but I read it somewhere recently.
I was just thinking that I wanted to look up how to do this!
We got a crayon maker for my son’s birthday, they love it but it takes a while and only makes 2 crayons, we could do this while we are waiting for the others…. Thanks!
This makes me want to gather up all of my scrap crayons!
Great idea!
I love doing this! As a matter of fact, we do this as a class project and then we share with other classes.
I’ve done this and then put them in goody bags for my son’s birthday party. I used my regular muffin tin with cupcake liners which made them bumpy around the edges. The kids loved them! Great idea to use fun shapes.
I used that very same puzzle mold from Ikea to make our crayons but we set the oven at a lower temp. Of course I can’t remember what temp. Ours are still totally useable. My tots loved that you can really put the pieces together!
Here’s the post I did on our crayon experience! What a blast! Blessings! http://treehugginmomma.blogspot.com/2010/06/crayon-puzzleshorray.html
I’m so glad I read this. I just bought cute $2 ice cube trays at Target specifically for the purpose of making crayons. You just saved me from a making a mistake too! I can’t wait to try to make them myself.
Hahahahaha! I love the melted trays!
So funny. I have the same trays, and as I read along, it didn’t occur to me that weren’t silicon either. I probably would have made the same mistake. We made some in muffin tins not too long ago–safe, but not as exciting as stars and puzzle pieces.
I agree with Ameena! Brilliant! Love the puzzle piece shapes.
I love that you can make whatever shapes you want out of these broken crayons. It’s much better than throwing them away! Your crayons came out great by the way. I’ve included your post on my weekly favorites here: http://play2grow.blogspot.com/2011/01/weekly-favorites-for-january-16-2011.html
I enjoyed doing this, but instead of cutting the paper off, I soaked them in a bowl of water overnight and then let the kids peel them. Made the job so much easier on me!