Every once in a while I get crafty.

The crayon bits were bothering me. They were taking over the crayon bin and everyone avoids them. What are they good for anyway? Choking on perhaps? So I thought that certainly we could make something cute with them by melting them. When I googled it I felt way less crafty because clearly every other mom in the history of the world has done this before. These were the simple directions I followed. It was fun and easy to get the kids involved.
I wanted to put it up here because I will certainly do it again.

We set up stations:
-a bowl for soaking crayons so that the labels would peel off easily
-a washcloth for patting dry crayons after soaking
-a container for the labels/paper
-muffin tin

Then I let Caitlin design her new crayons by placing the bits in the muffin wells. She made one pink/purple, many mixtures, one of various yellows--whatever. Once the colors schemes were designed, we broke the crayon bits down further as best as we could by breaking them into tiny bits with our hands.


Then we popped them in a 250-300 degree oven. It took maybe 10 minutes. Just until they were soupy. The thing that I did wrong was I didn't make each muffin/crayon equal size, so the ones with less crayon bits were melted way before the ones with more. So if I did it again, I would make them all the same as much as possible. In a couple cases, most of the crayons were melted together, but one or two bits were sticking straight up. I just used a wooden craft/popsicle stick to mash them in while they were hot and that worked okay. Note--do not mix them up unless you want a bunch of brown crayon disks in the end.
Then you pop them in the freezer for 30-60 minutes and then kind of fall out after that. Take them out carefully b/c they're pretty brittle and break easily.

The end product is pretty fun. They kept Caitlin busy coloring and experimenting for a good 2 hours this afternoon. The 2 year olds liked them too. We will do this again. They'd make fun little gifts too--especially if you have cuter muffin tins or the silicone ones that come in cute shapes. But I really like the circular ones.