Thinking outside the Crayon Box

Do you have children who refuse to use a crayon if it is broken?

Oh I do.  Rosie only likes whole crayons and is sharpening them in the crayon sharpener constantly.  So what do you do when you have more broken crayons than whole crayons?

You make new crayons.

One day while the big kids were at school and Lil Miss and I were coloring, I looked over at her and

she had a pile of crayon wrappers beside her.  Instead of coloring she was entertained by taking off the wrappers.  Crazy mommy me, I tell her to stop because then we won't know what color they are. 

Rationalizing this to a two year old... what was I thinking?

Then I got a brainstorm... let's make new crayons. 

I've seen it before where they melt the crayons down into cute shapes and didn't think it could be too hard.  It wasn't.

The hardest part was tearing off the wrappers and Lil Miss became an expert on that.   

 I sorted out our hodge podge box of crayons and put the crayons in piles accroding to color. 

I knew you could melt crayons in a vareity of colors and make them multicolored... but I wanted some order to it.  Control freak!!  ;-)

 Then we took all the wrappers off the crayons.  I swear I still have aquamarine crayon shavings under my fingernails.  Mommy got stuck doing all the hard ones that were stuck on really hard so some of the them I had to be scraped off with my nails. 

When they are all sorted and had all the paper off, you put them in any silicone mold. 

I sprayed it first with cooking spray and then filled the hearts half full.  

I stuck them in the oven on 350 degrees for 8 minutes or until they are melted. 

When they are done you just wait for them to cool off.

And abracadabra..... you got new crayons.  

 They easily pop out of the mold and are ready to use.   

Now we are fighting over the new crayons still... but they are recycled, so mommy doesn't have to buy stock in Crayola any more.