Love Crayons

Just like everyone that has kids, we have an ‘s’-ton of broken crayons. What do you do with them? I mean you can just use them I suppose, but when you are looking for that perfect color in the bucket (or whatever you happen to store your crayons in) the broken crayons aren’t the most desirable. So we have an idea. I’m sure we haven’t been the only ones with this idea, but we put a special Valentine spin on it.

Whilst traipsing through Joann’s the other afternoon with my little August I was hunting for some fabric for their special Valentine presents and also looking for a silicone mold. We wanted to make use of our broken crayons and this was a fun way for us to craft together. I wasn’t anticipating I would actually purchase the silicone heart mold (I’m not the hugest fan of hearts) but it seemed perfect when we saw it.

We have been peeling crayons for a couple of days now. One wouldn’t think this small bucket could hold that many broken crayons, but your eyes are deceiving you. Simon was pretty sure his wrists were going to fall off from all that peeling. I almost had to call the wah-mbulance. We finished peeling on Sunday afternoon during a giant blizzard, I told him I probably couldn’t drive him to the ER on the bad roads, so we’d definitely have to make a call. He usually isn’t amused, but on’ blizzard Sunday’ he thought it was one of the funniest things ever.

Peeling and breaking the bits into even littler bits was quite pleasing – for some weird reason. My favorite part about it was that we sat around the tiny table in our art room and just chatted and  chatted until we tired of peeling. We would find something else to do and come back to it again when we were ready.

Sometimes we even peeled crayons in our jammies.

We strategically placed the colors in the heart mold making sure no duplicate colors were in the same spaces. We wanted our crayons to be all mixed up – and we were keeping our fingers crossed we didn’t end up with a mold full of brown hearts.

Even the scraps were a colorful delight.

Ready for oven entry. We baked them at 350 degrees and just watched them melt…so I’m not sure exactly how long it took. I would say it wasn’t more than 5 minutes.

As they melted we were still keeping our fingers crossed for the perfect melted mix. We didn’t want 24 brown hearts…and….

We didn’t get 24 brown crayons. They weren’t even cooled yet (above) and they looked gorgeous. We let them cool for about an hour before removing the first gem to check it, and then we just let them sit overnight. I don’t think that was necessary, it was just bedtime and more fun to wait one more day before checking the final product.

When they cooled they lost a bit of their shimmer, but when we flipped them over…they were shimmeriffic!

Gus was stoked about the crayons? I have to admit, they were/are pretty fantastic. I mean they were/are ‘dance a jig’ fantastic!

Of course after a little discussion Simon went through the lot and chose 3 that he wanted to keep. The rest are going to be gifts, but they were just too pretty for him to part with all of them. We had 24, so him wanting to keep 3 felt just right.

They work!

Hopefully you’ll never dispose of a busted crayon again! Happy Crayon Recycling! Happy Crafting!