I don’t know about you but we seem to always have broken pieces of crayons floating around our home. At first, I was just tossing them because they were small and I thought it was pointless to keep them. Then I discovered Pinterest and came across several pins from people who had melted the small pieces in muffin tins. I thought that was a great idea and knew my kids would love to try that! Because the oven and hot wax are involved, my kids helped with peeling the paper off the crayons and sorting.
We sorted the crayons by color, which can be a great way for a small child to learn/recognize that there are different shades of the same color. However, I’ve seen several Pins now from people who actually mixed the colors to create multicolored discs which might look more fun. It’s up to you on how you want to sort the crayons.
I also used muffin liners this time around but if you spray your tins with some Pam, once the melted crayons have cooled, you should be able to pop them out. One Pin I read said that the metallic colors stained the muffin tins so use some that you don’t care about if you’re melting metallic.
[Tweet “Making new crayons out of broken ones. #Frugalliving”]
Heat your oven to 250 degrees, place the tins in your oven and let the crayons fully melt. Takes approximately 15 minutes for them to melt. Once fully melted, remove from oven.
You’ll need to stir them with a toothpick or something similar as the pigment separates from the wax. Let cool and either pop out or remove the muffin paper. The crayons are ready to use. 🙂
My kids love these and I even caught them purposefully breaking more crayons the next day in hopes of making more. lol I now keep an old nut container handy and toss the broken bits of crayons I find around the house in there. When we have enough pieces, we’ll melt more.
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