Friday, February 3, 2012

How To: Making Old Crayons into New Crayons

Want a fun activity to do with the kids when it's cold outside? How about taking those old, broken crayons and making them into new ones?

Step 1: Pull out all of your old and broken crayons.

Step 2: Strip off all of the crayon labels. 

Step 3: Sort all of the crayons into like colors, unless you want to have mixed colors, the mixed crayons can be interesting too once melted together.

Step 4: Find a cute young helper.

Step 5: Crayon molds. You can melt the crayons directly in muffin tins, but what we did was melt the crayons in old dog food cans that we washed out. We used these Ikea Ice Cube Trays as the molds since they had come pretty cool shapes. 

Step 6: Put the Crayons into the tin cans and heat them in the oven at 250 degrees until melted. Keep an eye on them, because some with be ready before others. There may also be some crayons that don't melt quite as easy. 

Step 7: Pour your melted crayons into your crayon mold/ice cube trays.
(Notice the use of the sexy "Ove Glove." on the hot tin cans.)

Don't touch the wax kiddies! It's HOT!

Step 8: Cool the crayon wax. If it's cold enough, below 40 degrees, you can cool them outside.
Otherwise, let them cool in the freezer until they harden completely.

Step 9: Carefully remove the new crayons from the mold. They are ready to use!

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