Saturday, July 30, 2011

Recycled Crayons

So I know everyone in the blog world has probably tried this by now, but I really was surprised at how easy it was to make these!
Lucy (my 4 year old daughter) had a bunch of broken crayons and ones she wouldn't use because the wrappers were missing, so I decided to make some recycled crayons out of them. It was a great project for her and I to do together and really didn't take very long!
First we sorted them out and took the wrappers off. Then we broke them into little pieces and put them into similar color families (so they wouldn't get all muddy) into a mini muffin tin.
Then we put the pan into the oven, which was preheated at 275 degrees. I didn't really time them - just checked on them every couple minutes. I'd guess it took between 15-20 minutes for them to melt completely.
Ta-da! Recycled crayons. I love how they're swirly looking. Lucy has been enjoying coloring with them. The penny pincher in me loves that in theory, you could melt these down when they get small, and so on, and so on.
A couple tips if you try this:
- If you are wanting to make a more swirly looking crayon with multiple colors, make sure the different colored crayon pieces are mixed evenly in the tins.
- I had a hard time getting these out of the tins after I took them out of the oven and they were cool, but I just popped them in the freezer for a few minutes and they came right out.

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