I have often though about making recycled crayons, but had issues;
(1) I am a little OCD. I hate crayons with the papers peeled off, and little tiny broken pieces. There are no broken crayons in my house, we have used twistables since they came out in 2002.
(2) Everywhere I had seen them, it recommended melting them in a muffin tin. Who wants to use a giant, round, muffin sized crayon?
Then I saw a heart shaped silicone mold, and thought it would be perfect for the job, and make cute valentines (our schools don't allow food).
I bought a box of 96 crayons, and we peeled off the papers. I admit, they've improved how well those things stay on in the past several years! Rick discovered it was easier to use a knife & run it down the length of the crayon, then they just popped off. The kids wanted to try the knife technique too - so we gave them butter knives!
Once all the crayons were peeled and sorted by color group, we chopped them into small chunks Rick, Rebekah and I used sharper knives and it only took a minute or two. Em did pretty well with the butter knife!
I thought they looked so pretty all divided up by color.
Then we filled the molds.
The kids were FASCINATED that I was going to put crayons in the oven!
The few places online I'd read about this suggested a temp of 150F. My oven is digital, and wouldn't let me do a number starting with 1. I have a bread-proofing setting, but that is 100F, but I thought that would take forever. I did them at 200F for about 15 minutes, and that seemed to work out fine.When they came out they'd dropped so much, I thought we'd need to fill the 2nd batch higher - but actually they were perfect. I think if they had been the full mold-full, they would have been too thick.
The silicone molds were super easy to get them out of too.We were all delighted with the results.
They looked great - I love the big swirls of color.
A new box of 96 crayons made 2 dozen heart crayons.
I bought some cute little red boxes at Michaels, and we packaged them up, six in a box.
Better than candy!
16 comments:
So cute. You are so creative Tania!
Tania, I have Luke's playgroup here this week. Do you think this is something that would be fun for 6 3yr olds....or to old? Where did you find the heart mold?
I marvel at how you find the time to do all these things!
ADORABLE! I wish I was in this class getting one. although I would probably try to eat it thinking it was chocolate. jk
That's such a great idea and looks like a lot of fun.
What a great idea! Do you give a box to every child in their class?
I always thought the same thing about muffin-shaped crayons - too thick. But the hearts are very cute.
Move over Martha Stewart!! Keep the ideas coming Tan. We love them.
Those are awesome, Tania.
Yeah, I'm watching the process thinking this looks like too much work. But then they're so dang cute I want to go make some myself! Love how pretty the colors look.
So seriously, this whole process took a little less than an hour! Not hard, or even really that messy. They cooled surprisingly fast.
I wish I'd bought more boxes of crayons, or thought of it when we were at the Crayola factory (where you can buy them by individual colors)& bought tons of pinks & reds ....
We just made a few boxes of 6 to take to select people, like a friend of Emy's who will be in hospital on Valentine's, etc. I saw some smaller boxes at Michaels that would fit one in, and thought that might be cute - also I thought 3 different colors in a small clear bag would also be cute. I'm planning on that for Emily's class for next year.
Oh and Liz - I thought that too. I'm planning on attaching some kind of heart shaped tag with "you color my heart" or something on it, so they know not to eat them!
Brilliant, Tania. We know of no one else who could take an idea like this and create a blog post with 17 pictures worthy of a craft magazine!
By the way, check your email - we have our own blog now.
I have seen these a lot but I too am a little sickened by broken crayons in my house so I toss them a lot--I like your brand new, color coordinated system! I have been too chicken to try this in the past but yours turned out so adorable I just may try!
Tania, I spend so much time throwing out crayons that you've inspired me to keep them for a project that I think I can actually do! Thanks for the awesome idea!!!!!!!!
Audrey
They look so great and I love the way you packaged them up for school friends. Very cute. By the way, I love the dress up that Jacob is wearing!
Emma, so yeah - Jacob has really been into wearing the Sleeping Beauty dress. What can I say, he has 3 sisters!
It's all come to an end now though, because he tore a huge section in the front, and Emily (the dresses rightful owner) flipped.
Really, we don't have any "boy" dress ups. We should probably invest in some.
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