Have you seen those cool Lego crayons? We have received some as party favors and my kids always love bringing them home and playing with them. There's always a surplus of broken crayons in our home and I recently found some never-been-used ice cube molds I bought from Ikea about a decade ago and I thought to myself, "Hey, why not upcycle some crayons on this Columbus Day since the kids are home!"
We started out by picking out the broken crayons from our stash.
Here's my munchkin, who thought he'd color his face like Joker for the day, peeling the wrappers.
We broke them into small pieces and placed them in cupcake liners.
I placed 3 cups at a time on a paper plate and microwaved them for 2 minutes and heated them some more in additional 30 second increments as necessary. (The glitter crayons actually melted quicker than the solid colored ones). A lot of the melted crayons actually stay on the liners and don't fully pour, so we had to put a bit extra crayon pieces in each.
We poured them into the molds, waited 10-20 minutes for them to cool and harden, then popped them out.
Some of them turned out good.
The kids were really excited to make them, and really excited to play with them when they were done. My daughter made a bed for these crayons. I don't think the kids will be using these for coloring any time soon.
These actually took us quite some time, as I had to take breaks to put the baby down to nap, and tried different methods of melting them (blow dryer, putting the whole $1 plastic mold into the microwave) and had catastrophic results - who knew that crayons can create such a mess!
There are other methods out there - using silicone molds and melting the crayons directly in them in the oven - but this is what worked for us with what we had on hand for a spontaneous project. It was (relatively) easy, free, and fun! What else can a mom ask for?
: : : Caeli & Co : : :
