Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Fun New Crayons Made from Broken Ones


Everyone with kids probably understands the struggle of broken Crayons.

As soon as you open the box, they start dropping them everywhere or break them. If your children are anything like mine, they refuse to use the broken ones for some (to me) inexplicable reason.

So, what to do with them?

We used to throw them out after a while, but then I saw an article on the Internet about a place that you can donate them to and they melt them, creating new crayons.... so my brain went into overdrive and I wanted to try that for myself – to maybe save those poor, broken crayon corpses from the horrors of the trashcan or the landfill.

At first we had to gather enough, so I designated a mason jar specifically for the collection of broken & unwanted crayons. Every time one broke we threw it in there, after a while we also collected the crayons you get at restaurants in that jar (they throw them out anyway, so we might as well put them to good use).

For this tutorial I also used some new ones because our Jar was kind of running low and I wanted to see to it I had some fresh made crayons ready in time for Easter favors for my son's class.


Fun New Crayons From Old Ones

What you will need:

- Crayons
- Cutting board
- Knife
- Bowls to sort the colors
- Mini Cupcake tin with liners or Silicone Molds (please be aware that you won't be able to use the silicone molds for anything other than crayons anymore)

How to do it:

Step one:If you haven't already done so, remove the wrappers and sort them by colors (unless you want to make multicolored ones).  You can get a nice mosaic effect by grouping into color families so that the crayon has various shades of the same color.

Step two:Chop them into small pieces and put them back into their assigned bowl.

Step three:Fill the cupcake liners and/or silicone molds with the small crayon pieces. You can try to make some bigger piles with the silicon molds, otherwise they will be rather flat shapes.

Also a little tip: you can get really cheap silicone molds at dollar stores or online!

Step four:Bake the crayons at 200F for 20-40 min or until they are completely melted and no more pieces are visible

Step five:Let them cool completely!

I recommend leaving them overnight before taking them out of the mold / liners.



What you will notice if you used cheap crayons, there will be a layer of just wax at the top of the crayon but you can easily trim it off if it bothers you.

Step six:
Have fun coloring or wrap them up nicely :

Here are some ideas for what you can use them for:

- Party favors
- Small gifts
- Game prices

You guys can probably come up with many more ideas what to use them for!




We have used them for the following:
  • Last holiday season we made some in Santa, Stocking, Mistletoe & Candy cane shapes, then we printed a few small coloring pages and Noah gave them to his friends at school.
  • We made some for Meryl's baby friends a while back, just as a random surprise.
  • Noah also made some cute heart shaped ones for his classroom on Valentines day 
  • He made some for the whole class for Easter, together with some small coloring pages. 
  • It's such an easy and affordable tiny something and what child doesn't like to color?















16 comments:

  1. This is suck a clever idea. My grandson hates broken crayons!Thanks for sharing with us on Thursday Favorite Things.
    Cheers,
    Jennifer
    http://awellstyledlife.com

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  2. Awww your crayon taster seems super tired from all the coloring. Sounds like something a child would love, mine are a lot older now. Thanks for sharing on the Bloggers Pit Stop

    Julie Syl Pit Stop Crew

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  3. This is cute and very creative reuse of crayons. I think my grandsons may not be able to break these as fast. Thanks for sharing at What'd You Do This Weekend.

    Wishes for tasty dishes,
    Linda

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  4. Great idea and so easy! Thanks for sharing with us at Over the Moon and have a lovely day.

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  5. How fun are these!!? What a great idea! Thanks for sharing! #SmallVictories

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  6. What a fun and creative idea! Thank you for sharing with us on the Art of Home-Making Mondays at Strangers & Pilgrims on Earth! I have pinned this :)

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  7. What a great idea. I love the different colors and shapes. Great way to peak the interest of a little one. Thanks for sharing on Sunday's Best.

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  8. Brought back sweet memories. My Mom used to do this for us when we were little. Thanks for sharing with us at Merry Monday. Love the idea of letting the little ones color on the cardboard.

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  9. Good morning! Just a little note to let you know this post has been FEATURED today at the Art of Home-Making Mondays at Strangers & Pilgrims on Earth. Thank you for joining us!

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  10. This is such a great idea! I've thought about re-making crayons and have even found crayon molds on etsy that are really cute! Will try this in the future!

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  11. very nice idea thanks for sharing with hearth and soul blog hop.pinning

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  12. These are so fun!!! My boys will love this idea! Thank you for linking up to The Best of the Blogosphere!!!

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  13. Such a great idea! Pinned! Thank for linking up to TOO Cute Tuesday!

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  14. I'm sure the kids had fun with these, especially all the different shapes. I love the laid down approach!

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  15. I just made them and they came out great! I put the tin in the refrigerator after they were done to speed up hardening. I need to get some good molds to shape them, i only used cup cake liners but, this is a fantastic idea!

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  16. I just made them and they came out great! I put the tin in the refrigerator after they were done to speed up hardening. I need to get some good molds to shape them, i only used cup cake liners but, this is a fantastic idea!

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