DIY: Recycled Crayons

Really, tutorials for this are all over the Internets, so we hardly need another one. This isn't really a tutorial so much as a "seriously, this is so easy, give it a try!" bit of encouragement. At any rate, recycled crayons in cute shapes were on my holiday gift to-do list, as part of the presents for a four-year-old niece and three-year-old nephew, so here is proof of my successful progress!

I've recycled crayons before, but I used a muffin tin, which could go in the oven. This time, because I wanted cute shapes, I used candy molds (this set; what a bargain!!), and those can't go in the oven. So I needed an interim step--the hot water bath.

After peeling the crayons, we sorted them by color into tin cans and broke them into smaller pieces. The colors are going to blend when they melt, and it ends up as one uniform color, so keep that in mind when sorting. (The two-color ones in the top picture were made by pouring two different colors in the mold.) For the first batch (not shown), we sorted warm (red, orange, yellow) and cool (blue, green, purple)--I only had two tin cans. We ended up with red and blue. This batch yielded purple, brown, and green. Put some water in a pan and place your cans in. I used a pan I no longer use for cooking (it belongs to the kids' play kitchen now), which was smart, because some wax ended up in the water and deposited on the pan, and I don't really have to scrub it off because who cares if the pretend soup gets wax in it?

Boil your water, but keep an eye on your crayons. When your glasses get fogged from taking off the cover and peeking, your helper will go find her sunglasses so they can get fogged because she is still at the age when she wants to be just like her mama.

She's holding a bamboo skewer there. I used that to stir my melting wax so the chunks would all melt. Once the wax is all melted, carefully pour it into the molds. (Not a job for the child helpers, obviously.)

Once they're set, wiggle the molds a bit to pop them out. The helper wanted flowers, so those are for her.

The brown ones look a lot like chocolate, but they are not. Don't eat the crayons.

How cute are these?? And so, so easy. I have a set of numbers for each giftee, plus vehicles, balls, hearts--enough crayons to put together a really cute gift bag, and my kids helped make them. (All the kids helped peel; my daughter was the only one home when I made this batch.)

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