So my dear seven-year old is schlepping home his school supplies since they’re almost out for summer vacation, and his crayons were in a particularly sorry state.
No fear! We can recycle them into fun rainbow crayons, and keep the kiddos occupied for a while, too.
- First up, sorting all of the broken crayons. (My 3-year-old loved this part!)
- Peel off the paper wrappings on the crayons. (Keep them in a baggie…we can use those later, too!)
- Sort the crayons by color categories- cools, pinks, brights, whatever.
- Break the crayons up into 1 inch bits, and drop them into those Reynolds disposable aluminum “fun shape” baking cups. (Note: I think they aren’t making these anymore, but I found the star ones at the dollar store. I stocked up!)
- Put your aluminum baking cups on a cookie sheet, and pop it into a 275 oven for, oh, 15 minutes or so. You’ll see when it’s melted through.
- You can either turn off the oven and wait for it to cool in there, or take them out and let them cool on the counter. I was impatient, so after they were cool enough to handle, I stuck them in the fridge for 15 minutes.
- When cool, peel off the aluminum. Voila! Fun rainbow crayons!!
Another note: sometimes if the crayons are cheap, there is a lot of uncolored wax that floats to the top, creating a hazy, waxy layer. There’s no pigment in this layer, so kids can get a little frustrated because their crayon won’t work. You can remove this layer with a little skillful paring with a knife, or else melt it off with a heat gun or blow dryer. Just hold the crayon carefully, and heat up the waxy film and let it drip into a pile of paper towels or old newspaper.)
Now you just have to open up some old paper shopping bags and let ’em get creative!
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Izabella says
wOw!! kool blog!!
xo Izabella
from Creative Souls
Allison says
Fantastic! When I got married this summer I had LOTS of children in the wedding party and at the wedding. I wanted everyone to feel involved so we made 2 star crayons for each child with a small pad of paper. It was such a hit. Thanks!
Julie says
Oh cool! I made some of these back in March and April for my etsy shop – the first thing I thought when I saw those star containers was “Those will be *perfect* for recycled crayons!”
They also make heart shaped ones, and you can get ghosts and pumpkins around Halloween.
I love it when great minds think alike! 🙂
I found this blog when I was searching for crafty stuff – it’s way fun! (love the name) I’ll be bookmarking it to read more later.
Melissa says
This is neat but you do have to have a lot of patience peeling off all of the wrappers. So if you plan on doing this with little ones I would peel the crayons ahead of time. I had a total of 4 that were easy to peel off. I was planning on making a lot of these and I only made about 4. I used a vegetable peeler to get the waxy part off of the outside.