Recycled Crayons

Got old broken crayons? Here’s an idea, why not recycle them? We all have that seemingly endless supply of stubby crayons that pop up EVERYWHERE and just when you think you’ve rustled them all up you always find more… or at least that’s how it happens in my house 🙂 Well break out an old muffin tin and make some cool recycled crayons out of those old broken scraps! Why would I want to make crayons in a muffin tin when I could just go out and buy some new ones, you ask? Well, for one it’s recession time and you may want to save money while trying to be “green” or you may like the idea of your kids making some homemade gifts! Did I mention these make great gifts 🙂 They also make excellent party favors for a kids party, oh yeah folks, I’m just full of good ideas today, lol! Here’s another tip, if you have different shapes of muffin tins use those as well, get creative! I’ve seen hearts, stars, flowers there are muffin tins of all shapes and sizes but so I don’t overwhelm you with pictures, (well I still might), we’ll stick to regular shaped muffin tins. Now if you are doing a themed party and you want to make these as favors you might want to go buy or borrow one specifically for that event. Okay, here we go… As always I like to provide you with options so here are two of my top picks!

Not without Salt‘s key points to making recycled crayons… remove paper, sort by favorite color combinations & chop up crayons, divide among muffin cups, place in 150 degree oven for 45 minutes and wait for them to completely cool. She even get’s impatient and puts them in the freezer, lol! Check out her blog for the full story and all the great pics 🙂

Next up is Whimsy Love’s Cool Chunky Crayon Tutorial. I like that she uses regular and mini muffin tins for this one! And she mentions heading out to yard sales or thrift stores to pick some up, lol, I actually do this! Don’t laugh but I had a dream last night about going to the local thrift store and hitting the mother load of muffin tins! Every shape and size I was tossing them in my cart like they were going out of style! Yes, I know, I have a problem 🙂 But one can never have too many muffin tins especially when there are so many wonderful things you can do with them! Ok, back to the crayons, now this gal has different oven temps so read carefully she does different size pans too and keeps a close eye! But the basics are the same peel the crayons, break them up into smaller pieces, sort out your colors the way you like and divide into muffin cups. Her oven temp is 350 because she wants them melted fast, lol but you can do 225. Just keep an eye on things and you’ll be fine 🙂 Now for the pictures! She has the best pictures and it was hard to choose so there are several here and even more on her site so go look there too! But here are a few of my favorites…

I know that’s a lot of pictures and I left out several more cool ones! She puts GLITTER in some of them too but I had to stop somewhere 😉 In all of my research I have come across several good tips to pass along as well… 1.After they are cooled put them in the freezer to harden, they pop right out!

2. Don’t refire the oven if you are too impatient. Just wait and get over it. It’ll be a character-modeling lesson for the kids. Right, the kids 😉

3. 2-3 highly contrasting colors gave the best scribble. The all-shades-of-blue crayon looked great, but was a little underwhelming when it came to performance testing.

4. Don’t fill your cups all the way to the top unless you want really chunky crayons, they are too much for tiny hands but if you have bigger kids then no worries.

5. 3 full crayons are about all that you’ll want in a mini-muffin tin. It looks like it will hold more, but you don’t want them coming over the edge and spilling in your oven.

6. Use a pan underneath while the crayons are in the oven… just in case 😉

Now this last one I read and was like uh oh! I would say try your own batch with the crayon scraps you have around the house but if you are going to make them as gifts, splurge and buy them when they go on sale 🙂  7. Use only one brand/kind of crayon. The batch we made of only regular Crayolas melted more evenly. When you throw in the washable ones (very hard to melt) and all the freebies from dining establishments, differential melting becomes a problem as some melt to water-like consistency while other are rock hard. Also, some are more brittle (the washable ones?) and didn’t make very strong crayons for the over-active scribbler. So there you have it all you need to know about making recycled crayons! Are you feeling inspired yet? 🙂

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