Recyling Crayons

While working in our church nursery a couple of Sundays ago I noticed this lovely bucket of broken crayons that the kids where trying to color with. Without hesitation I quickly told the nursery leader that I had seen on a couple of blogs how you could melt down old broken crayons and make them new again and that I would be up for the challenge if she wanted me to try. She had no objections so that week I got to work on what I though would a fun simple project!

First you have to peel off all the paper on the crayons. You think that this would be an easy job but you come to realize once you are working on trying paper off crayons that I have been around since the church was built how hard and tedious this job can be. So then I had a brilliant idea which I am sure my friend Niki laughed at when I messaged her with my brain wave to steam the paper off....OK now that you have composed your self from busting a gut at the fact that I tried to steam paper off a wax substance I will continue with my adventure as I am sure many of you can image the big mess I had in my steamer after only have the crayon in there 1 minute trying to remove the paper.

So finally I worked out a little "paper taking off" system by using a knife that helped speed things up until my thumb was so sore but now that its calloused over I am sure the next time I do it, it may go over better.

Once all the paper was off I shorted the crayons out by color and placed them into a lined muffin tin.


I put them into the oven (300) for about 10-15 minutes.

The colored did look so pretty but the whole house smelled like a big waxy crayon factory and I thought from reading some of these other blogs that the crayon came popping out like nothing and it was easy as pie to make "new" crayons...haha not exactly as the wax leaked through the paper liners and stained the muffin tin. I am way to scared to use it now because who wants their honey bran muffins tasting like wax!

So after this batch in the oven I decided to follow some one else instruction they had posted where you can put the crayons into a tin (old soup can) and melt the crayons in boiling water. Once melted I poured into a silicon star shaped ice cube tray. This process seemed to work better but still after a week the wax smell is still lingering in the house!

So here is my finished bucket of crayons. Some big round ones from the muffin tin and lots of stars. The "new' crayons work really well. I think that the kids loved them and of course these ones are easy for the little kids to color with.

As for a project to do again. I may wait until my little guy is past the stage of eating the crayons before I try this project again.

For more works for me ideas head on over here.