Reused Crayons

My little man, who turns 21 months old this week, is really getting into drawing with crayons! At least twice a day, he comes and gets me and asks "color, Mommy?" How can I resist that?!? And as much as my son loves to color, he's really rough with the crayons. Loads of them have broken tips, or have broken into two or three pieces, making them hard for him to hold.

So, this weekend, we took all of those old crayons, and remelted them into new ones!

You will need:
crayons

Crayon bits in the mold

a heat-safe container (like a silicone muffin pan or muffin tin. Fun shapes work great!)
oven

First, you will need to break up your crayons into medium-to-small sized chunks. You can mix colors together like I did (I mixed my yellows/oranges, red/purple/pink, and blue/gray), or you can keep your colors separate. Make sure that you remove all of the paper and adhesive from the crayons!

Next, just toss the crayon pieces into your mold. Put your mold into the oven and set it to the lowest possible setting. I melted my crayons at 150 degrees for 10 minutes, and they came out perfect!

Finished new crayons!

Once the crayons are completely melted, just remove the mold and let the crayons cool to room temperature before removing them. Your colors will blend together and make great patterns! My son adores his new football-shaped crayons... great for his little hands!

One thing that I notices after coloring with the new crayons, there was a thin layer of uncolored wax that formed on the top of the crayon while it was still in the mold . I just used a butter knife to scrape it away.

Happy coloring! :o)