Recycle Crayons

I published this post way back in August and have finally gotten around to trying it.

"Do you have a lot of broken crayons lying around your house, we sure do. Bargain Briana has written a great post about how to recycle them."

We have so many broken crayons that my 2 year old can't use because they are too small that I decided it was time to make them into new ones.

I went to the Dollar Store and bought a muffin tin - didn't want to use mine. I also bought some cooking spray to make sure they didn't stick. I went through my sons tub of crayons and took out all the broken ones and started to take off the wrappers. I didn't think I needed to soak them in water, thought I could do it easily. I was wrong, definitely soak them first. Next my son and I put the pieces in the tins, trying to make some fun creations. I tried to heat my oven to 150 but it only went down to 170. Stuck them in and waited 15 mins. Not much happened. So I waited some more - still not to much melting so I raised the temp to 200. Some melted while some of the crayons didn't at all. By this point they had be in the oven for quit a while so I took on old butter knife and tried to smush them. That didn't really work so I just took out the unmelted crayons. I was tired of waiting. Stuck them in the freezer to harden - this step went smoothly. They only took a few minutes to harden. Then came the really hard part, getting them out. I thought the cooking spray would help but it didn't. Only one came out with ease, the others I had to use the butter knife to scrape around the edges and then bang the muffin tin on the cutting board to get them out. Some broke. I finally managed to get them all out. I have to admit they look cool all swirled and colorful. When I tried coloring with the full circle ones I had a hard time and so did my son. The broken ones were easier to color with and easier for my son to handle so I broke the full ones in half.


My son had a fun time with his new crayons, I think he enjoyed stacking then in a tower more. But all in all it's a cute idea and if you can get them to come out of your pan easy then it's worth the time to make them. (And if you do get them out easily please tell me how :)