I was cleaning out the twins art supply cupboard today (that had mysteriously spilled all over the house) ... you know sorting pencils, markers, crayons and paints into containers and just generally organizing the mess that the kids had managed to make in there.
I almost filled a container with broken pieces of crayon. It was crazy. I'm not one to waste things and like to find a new use for them, and in the back of my mine I knew I'd come across a website a while ago that had done something with these, so after a little on-line searching of my bookmarked pages I finally found it. Hop, Skip and Jump. This idea is pure genius. She put all of the tiny pieces of crayons into muffin pans, popped them into the oven and turned them into brand new crayons for her kids. This is another one of those ideas that I wish I'd thought of.
This is where we started. A lovely container of crayons.
Preheat the oven to about 250(F). Take off all the wrappers, break any larger pieces in half and pop them into muffin pans:
Bake for about 15 minutes. The result will be melted crayon. Don't worry if it looks like colored water with big globs of crayon in it. I panicked a little but it was fine. Put the tray into the freezer. The crayons should be firm after about 30 minutes.
And the finished result.
I'm going to keep any broken crayon pieces in a zip lock bag in the future so that I can continue doing this for the kids. I'll get a little more creative though mixing colors and trying to make patterns. I may even get more silicone baking cups in different shapes. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I saw heart shaped ones in the $1 section at Target last week. I think I need to make a quick trip there tomorrow.
