Recycled Crayons

Caleb loves to color and has lots and lots of crayons. In fact, he has so many that his crayon box is overflowing and almost impossible to close. I got so tired of trying to force crayons to fit into the box that I decided we needed to do something about them. I remembered that I had seen a neat craft idea in Family Fun magazine for recycled crayons, so we tried it.

We started by finding all of the broken crayon pieces. We took the paper off, broke them into smaller pieces, and put them in molds.

Before

After

We then baked them in the oven. The crayon pieces melted together to make some really neat swirly crayons. Once baked, we let them cool for a while on the counter. The new recycled crayons came out of the molds much easier than I anticipated. The finished products were great.

Here are some things I learned while doing this:

• A number of different types of crayons can be used including cheap ones from local restaurants. I was afraid that they might not melt well together, but they did.



• You should keep a close eye on the crayons while they are baking. After the time alloted on the instructions, I noticed that some of the crayon pieces were not melting. I then baked them for a bit too long as many of the colors melted together too much.


• These crayons make great gifts. Caleb gave some out to friends and family.