making recycled crayons

For a while now I have been admiring the neat shaped crayons that everyone seems to be making to re-use their broken bits of crayon, so yesterday I decided to give it a try!

I followed the instructions in the book Crafting with Kids by Jennifer Casa.

I carefully sorted the crayons by colour . . .

(my favourite part of the project!)

. . . peeled off the paper

 and then broke them into small pieces

(which for me was the hardest part of the project!)

Then I filled my lightly oiled Ikea silicone ice cube tray with the crayon bits, put it on a cookie sheet and popped it in the oven at 200 degrees.

 

The book said that the melting time would vary according to your oven, mine took about 25 minutes.  I stirred them a bit with toothpicks to make sure there were no lumps.

I was a bit impatient when it came to waiting for them to completely cool so after about 25 minutes of waiting I popped them into the freezer.

They were very tricky to pop out of the mold but I think this was due to two things:

~ a few were made from poor quality crayons

(I think I'll only use Crayola from now on)

~ a star shape with delicate points may not be the best shape to start out with.

 *Note:  Ikea makes heart shaped trays that would be fun for Valentine's Day!

But overall they were fun to make and I did get a few out successfully.

The one thing I would like to mention that I didn't know beforehand is that once you use a mold for crayons, it gets stained so you really can't use it for anything else again.  So just make sure you don't use your best mold.

I'm eager to hear if you have tried making these recycled crayons or have any tricks that would improve my results?

~ joey ~

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Like Mama~Like Daughter - Eco-Kids Tuesday