Over the years we have accumulated many crayons, and over time, they inevitably get broken. As I am sure you know, it is way more fun to color with fresh new crayons than broken ones. So these poor lonely crayons accumulate and settle to the bottom of the box passed over in favor of their sleek, full-sized brethren. A couple months ago, the crayons got sorted so the broken ones had their own box that I kept up on the shelf for a someday later project. Someday finally arrived! I allowed/made my girls help me tear the paper off so they could be chopped up.

I have always thought it would be cool to make crayons into new ones by melting them together in the oven. We put the crayon chunks into paper liners in the muffin tin. (I also had some foil liners and highly recommend those over the paper ones. They come out easier and they have a pretty shiny look.)

In the oven at 250 degrees for about 15 minutes. They don’t come out looking too pretty sometimes….

Until you take them out of the liners!

I love the way they turned out! You can do all kinds of color combinations to make them interesting. I like how the paper and foil liners make them look like bottle caps. I packaged them up to give as gifts for Christmas.

I am definitely not the first to melt down crayons, so if you want to see more ideas check out Pinterest or google.

Before the first pan had cooled, I wanted to try painting with the melted crayon. I found a canvas that My Princess had painted a lovely shade of Toddler gray a few years ago. I used an old kids watercolor set paintbrush and dipped it into the wax while it was still hot. It worked pretty well until the crayons started to cool (started painting the blue flower and ended with the red).  I think it turned out kind of cool!