Rainbow Crayons

 

We love to recycle our broken crayons. It seems a waste to throw them away, but who needs broken crayons!? For our valentines this year we made heart shaped crayons with our old, broken crayons. It's very easy and fun to do and you don't need much to do it! There are a lot of ways to do this, but with all the "recipes" all you need is some old broken crayons and a silicone mold (and an oven.).

What You Need:

• old broken crayons (if you have little kids, you have these.)
• silicone mold with fun shapes. (You might want to forever designate these to crafting afterward and you can buy cheapy molds at Ikea or Target. I got mine at Target a few years ago in the dollar area.)
• Knife and cutting board for very thick crayons.

What You do:

1. Peel all the paper off the old, broken crayons.

2. Break them up some more. You may need to cut extra thick crayons with a knife, they're tough to break, but the thin ones are a snap. (literally!) At this point my kids had a great time sorting them into piles of different colors.

3. Have your Octopi fill the molds with bits of crayons. You can do different shades of the same color, do different colors for a swirly rainbow effect, or do themed crayons like "fall" with reds and yellows and oranges and "night" with dark blues and purples and bits of silver for stars.

4. Put the filled molds into a preheated 200* oven just until the crayons melt. Keep an eye on your crayons. They'll take about 15-20 minutes to melt. The kids had a fun time coming to see them melt at different stages.

 5. When melted take the molds out to cool on the counter or put in the freezer to speed the process. Be very careful when taking the molds out of the oven, melted wax is very flimsy and super hot!

6. When cool and hard, pop the crayons out of the molds.

7. Color! Or double stick tape to cards made from card stock with phrases like "You color my world" and "You melt my heart" and gift to other Octopi for Valentine's Day.

*Tip: To clean your silicone molds, spill a little oil in the tray and swish it around. Let is stand for a little bit then scrub our your trays with soap and water. It really cleans up pretty well.