09 October 2009

Recycled crayons!

I love recycling crayons! One of my favorite preschool themes is "rainbows" because we get to make rainbow-layer crayons and grate crayons to make rainbows in a bottle. A few years ago, I got my hands on a silicone muffin tin with heart shapes, so I made a TON of heart-shaped crayons, and had lots of fun experimenting with swirls, rainbows, etc.

Silicone pans, though, are pricey, and really, make crayons that are beautiful but too big to be really useful. So I'm branching out--to ice cube trays. Now, don't be fooled (like my friend R)--they look like silicone, but they're NOT and will melt in the oven. So, you have to melt thd crayons and pour them into the molds...which, time-wise, has me yearning for the ease of silicone. I know, I know...

So, here are the pumpkins. This tray came from Dollar Tree, if you're shopping. I used old crayons I had on hand from a display last year, but it's time to find some teachers who will stockpile them for me. If you've never done this before, it takes at least 4 crayons to make 1 recycled crayon--and that's with a small mold.

I started by soaking the crayons. Otherwise, it's a big pain to peel the wrappers.



Next, we peeled the wrappers off and sorted them into color piles.




Then, because I didn't have any tin cans in thd recycle bin, I used a Pyrex measuring cup to melt the crayons in the oven. Give or take, it took about 12-14 minutes on 350.

I poured the melted wax into the tray molds, let it harden for a while, then popped out my new pumpkin crayons.




If you're counting, I only got 27 out of this batch. Well, 24 really since I experimented with wax temperature on a few of them (fail!).



-- out & about, courtesy of the wonderphone

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