Memories Made by a SAHM: Melted Crayons for Valentines Gifts

♥ Homemade Melted Crayons for Valentines ♥

Great use for old broken crayons or the ones the kids will no longer use because they are no longer pointy! Let's recycle those crayons and make a fun new crayon!

Materials:

Silicone Molds-Cupcake are best I've found

broken or used crayons

cookie sheet

bowl of water

oven to melt crayons in

I've done this with my daughter for the past couple years we collect the old crayons from her class and usually other classes and recycle the used crayons to make new heart shaped crayons. It helps the teachers out because they get the kids to clean out their desks of the old broken crayons and helps us make a cheap reusable gift for her classmates. Every year the kids have been so excited to get a heart crayon from her and she asked to do it this year, so last week I sent a note to my daughters teacher asking for any broken crayons they may have. Well, the teacher did not disappoint, a few days later my daughter came home with a gallon size bag overflowing with crayons. I laughed a little though as most are not broken, but they are used down to the paper so I guess they are no good to the kids :)

So I have found the easiest way to get the paper of the crayons is take a big bowl and soak them in water for awhile. (See the picture lots of big unbroken crayons!) The easiest crayons for this are Crayola crayons as the paper doesn't seem to be glued to the crayon, but most kids don't have those. Anyways, so I just soak them for as long as I can usually just toss them in and go about my day and then come back to the bowl later and MOST of the paper comes off. You do have to kind of scrap off the part where the glue met the crayon though on some crayons. I've seen some people use a knife to cut a slit in the paper on each crayon and peel the paper off, but I've cut my finger and that takes longer in my opinion.

Next you break the crayons into little pieces if they aren't already smallish. I'm saying little we tried to keep them to an inch or under. I did have my 7 year old help with this process so she could put the colors in the silicone muffin cups so an inch is as small as she could break them. The smaller they are the faster they melt. Fill the cups to where it's just over the tops as they melt down. I always put the molds onto the cookie sheet because once the wax melts you don't want it sloshing around when you remove them from the oven trust me!!!!

My oven was set 250 degrees and we ended up having these bake for about 20 minutes. I'd set the timer for 10-15 minutes and check them! You want them to all melt together, but not so much that the color completely runs together, this first round almost went to far I think. They look cool though so we will totally use them, but they ran way together and that wasn't my intention. There's 21 kids in her class so we are trying again today and I'll update you on the time.

update: I did do another round of these and kept the oven at 350 degrees and it still took over 15 minutes to melt the crayons but it was faster, these were muffin sized molds so the smaller molds would take less time so be sure to keep a close eye on your crayons!

Once they are all melted down set them on the counter and let them cool maybe 30 minutes I didn't time it we let them cool over night because it was bedtime. If you can't wait you can speed up the process by placing them in the freezer! Then when they are completely cool carefully pull the silicone mold away from the crayons and you are done! The photos below are the same crayons before and after being pulled from the mold, so the bottoms on the left and tops on the right. Each new crayon is unique and has different colors throughout which makes them so much fun! I tried to tell my daughter to not put to many dark colors together and not to many of the same color close to each other as well so there's a bigger rainbow effect. She did a pretty good job on some, but some crayons didn't have as much rainbow to them as others did!