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The ‘MISTER’ Make It and Love It Series: Making Crayons
March 14, 2011 - By Ashley Johnston 68 Comments
I’m sure glad this husband of mine planned ahead with me and busily created some projects with the kids a couple of months ago. It was fun to see him in action with the kids, while I took the pictures. He has been a fantastic guest blogger while I’ve been munching on a newborn. However, I should have taught him how to edit and upload pictures and text. Ha!
Did you see the other two
MISTER Make It and Love It posts, found
here and
here? Thanks Steve, for taking over the content of the posts for the last week or so, while baby and I have been re-cooperating.  It’s been lovely.
(
Yes, I had my baby…..in case you missed it, you can read about it here and here.)
. . .
As for the last post in this little series with the Mister…………some new molded crayons were made with the kiddos.  (I think he felt like a kid again making these crayons. And may have loved doing this just as much as they did.)
I’m sure many of you have seen this done several times and in many different ways. Nothing new here. But this is another great project that daddy’s can do with their kids. Or uncles or grandpa’s. (Or just an idea for a rainy day.) And you don’t have to be terribly creative to be successful with this project. Perfect, right?
First, pull out all of those old broken crayons and start peeling all the papers away. (Or, like in our case, buy a fresh new box of crayons.) The kids have fun with this part and loved the freedom of being destructive.
If you’re having trouble getting some of the papers off, cut a slit down the side of the crayon and then peel the paper away. Saves some time.
You will need a nice variety of colors, all freshly peeled and broken.
Next, you can use any sort of oven safe molds for the next step. I bought these silicone molds at IKEA for a dollar or two and they worked great. (However, they are now officially crayon molds because I can’t get the crayon off. But that’s okay, because more crayons will be made with these in our future.)
Next, start filling up the little molds with a variety of colors, breaking up the crayon pieces a little smaller if necessary.
Make sure to let those little hands help. They will love this. (You can even have the older children sort by color……they’ll love the task.)
Then place the molds in a pre-heated 250 degree (F) oven for 5-10 minutes…….peeking in on them every so often. Also, place tin foil down on the rack below the crayons, in case there are any spills. Crayon would not be fun to clean out of the oven.
When you have noticed that the crayons are almost all the way melted, use a toothpick to gently poke at the crayons……..releasing some of the air pockets. But you don’t want to actually mix it because you want your colors to stay separate and vibrant.
Once the crayons are completely melted, pull the molds out of the oven and allow them to rest on the counter until cooled. (It took about 15 minutes for crayons this size.)
**Variation: You can melt crayons in the microwave (in a bowl) and pour the liquid wax into molds. However, doing it this way won’t give you such a nice chunky color variety in each crayon. But it would still work great and produce a fun new crayon shape.
Then place the molds in the freezer to allow them to really harden…….and speed up the cooling process. (I left them in the freezer for about 15 minutes.)
Next, run the bottoms of each mold under hot water, to help soften up the silicone tray and help separate the crayons from the bottom of the mold. Then push the molds from the bottom and pop out each crayon.
Now you should have a lovely assortment of fresh new crayons.
In lots of child-pleasing shapes.
You may feel jealous that you never had these as a kid. Well, I was.
(I would have loved having these in my little crayon caboodle as a little girl, all ready for my 1st grade coloring sheets. Wowza.)
Now the other fun part.
Using the new crayons.
Roll out some paper on the floor and let the kids have at it.
And teach them how to draw something new.
They’ll feel so proud.
And if the person helping with the project is anything like my husband, they’ll be just as happy on the floor with kids.
Enjoy!
