Homemade Crayons

I have seen homemade crayons on various parts of the web, like at KittyBabyLove.com, PlanetGreen.com, and Earth Grown Crayons. They seem so simple to make and who doesn't have old broken crayons laying around?

I have been searching for the right type of mold to put the melted crayon wax in for awhile. I had no success until my recent trip to IKEA. Once we had the vessels to make crayons, the homemade crayon party was on!

Homemade Crayons

You will need:

• An assortment of broken crayons, preferably older, used crayons because no one likes breaking a perfectly good crayon to bits. (Well, maybe kids do, but adults would rather cherish new crayons until the next homemade crayon party!)

• Old tin cans (such as soup cans or canned veggie cans) preferably washed or rinsed out. You can also use glass or ceramic jars (I used old jelly jars because I didn't have any tin cans around). They should be small and something you will not use again unless it is for crayon making or other art projects. *The wax from the crayons may not wash off well after the melting.

• A small pot, you may want to pick one up from a local thrift store on the cheap or be prepared to scrub away or put it away for another art project. *The wax from the crayons also got a little on my pan and didn't come off that well, so just giving you fair warning.

• Long popsicle or craft sticks or old spoon (not plastic) that you might not mind throwing away when finished. *You will use these for stirring the melted crayons so it might be wise not to use any untensils that you may use for eating with afterwards.

• Plastic flexible molds. You can also use tin foil made into shapes as described at KittyBabyLove.com

• Oven Mitt and/or pot holder *Also, something you won't mind if wax gets on them.

• I also had cardboard handy that I put under the mold as I was pouring the melted wax into them to protect my counter.

First you need to gather all of the old and broken crayons that you have laying around the house (you know you have some!). You then take all of those crayons and begin to remove any wrappers that are on them.

The boys going through the crayons.

We decided to do yellow, green, red, blue mixed with metallic crayons, and brown mixed with gold crayons. You will want to also break them into small pieces so they can melt easier.

These are the jars I ended up using. I didn't use the large one, but all of the small ones worked out great.

Start off by putting the pan with cold water onto the stove and let boil. Once boiled set the jar of crayons into the water and let reboil. I found it helpful to keep a watchful eye on it as they are melting and to keep stirring until fully melted.

Yellow crayons in the ceramic bowl as they begin to melt.

Once the crayons are melted, it will be VERY hot! Do not hesitate to use extra caution at this time. I used the oven mitts to hold the jar as I stirred in the boiling water and when I removed the jar from the water. Turn the stove either on low or off and put the jar onto the cardboard so you can get a better grasp on the jar when ready to pour into the mold.

Here are the molds from IKEA. They are originally made for long thick ice cubes, but will now be our new crayon molds.

Try to work quickly, but safely, when pouring the melted crayons into the molds. I tried my best to pour the melted crayons in as neatly as possible, but it didn't matter in the end because you can carve or break off any extra pieces as you please. Let the molds cool as long as needed.

Once cooled, pop them out of the molds (this is where flexible molds work the best) and color to your hearts intent!

These were so easy and I feel like I really liked doing it more than the kids! The boys got a little bored with the beginning of the project because it took awhile to take all of the wrappers off the crayons and break them into small pieces. But once we got into the actual part of melting the crayons they were very interested! All I had to do was explain to them that we were doing a science experiment and making something new from something old and they were hooked! They couldn't wait for them to cool so they could create some art and to be able to call themselves scientists!