Last June, I was forced recruited by my daughter’s Kindergarten teacher to participate in the end of year classroom clean up. One task assigned was to go through countless boxes and bags of crayons and remove the broken ones. At the end of this tedious valuable task I eagerly presented the sorted crayons to the Kindergarten teacher who promptly told me to toss the bag of broken ones into the trash. Now I am not sure whether it was the hoarder side of me or the Pinterest- addicted side of me that kicked in first but I cradled the bag of discarded crayons in my arms like a baby and refused to throw them out. I then quickly skipped home dreaming about all the wonderful projects I would do with my new bag of broken crayons.

Now at this point in the story I must disclose that I had a significant amount of my own broken crayons left unsorted at home, yet, somehow it was this new bag of broken crayons that got my creative craft juices flowing. I settled on repurposing the crayons into new ones. I remembered that I had purchased on sale some months earlier a silicon baking mold of sea shapes that would be perfect for the project.  So after a lot little pealing of wrappers, I filled each shape with broken crayons and baked them away in my oven. Eventually, after a little trial and error I got some really great sea shaped crayons that became an instant hit with my daughter.   I also took some new sea shaped crayons and put them in old clean fish bowl and gave them back to my daughter‘s  teacher as a end of the year present. She was thrilled and put them aside for next year’s kindergarten class.  So if you have lots of broken crayons laying around your home, this is an easy craft project to get your creative juices flowing!

My Re-purposed Crayons Recipe:

• Broken crayons with the wrappers peeled off
• Baking /cupcake/ice molds in desired shape

• Fill up the molds with the unwrapped broken crayons and bake at 250 Degrees for about 20 minutes or until melted. Let them completely cool before removing crayons from mold

Tips:

• I preferred using the silicon molds because the crayons come out easier, but regular tin molds will work
• Use molds that you plan on never using again for baking because the crayons leave residue wax and dye on the molds. However, another option is to line the molds with tin foil to prevent residue, but you get a rougher looking finished product
• Peeling the wrappers off is tedious but I found putting them in a freezer bag and hitting them with a hammer helped break the crayon off the wrapper and expedite the process
• Group crayons in similar colour pallets it looks nicer and you avoid the colours mixing together and making  many mud-coloured crayon
• Fill the molds up, I found that less crayons may melt faster but they also break easier
• Different brands of crayons have different melting points, which mean that sometimes your crayon will be textured.
• Finally, get your little ones involved, my daughter loved picking the colours for her new crayons and seeing the results. It was also a great learning opportunity to discuss primary and secondary colours.

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