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Today I am going to share another “non-food” recipe that goes with the “Back to School” spirit we’ve been in lately. These last few weeks have been consumed with finding our rhythm with our school schedule, my husband’s work and my writing work. But this week we took some time out to take care of a bag full of broken crayons that I somehow had collected over the last four years. I was amazed at how many we had! I didn’t want to throw them away, so I kept the bag, but the girls didn’t really like to use the little bits and pieces left. I saw very expensive “recycled crayons” at the store, and thought, “We could do that!” The crayons were swirled with different colors, which made them fun too.

 

I felt ours were a big success! We love how they turned out, and they are going to be part of the party favors for my little girl’s b-day party.

 

After reading different people’s methods, I decided to simplify the process as much as possible. I choose to cut up the crayons, and let my girls put them into an ovenproof mold. Then all I had to do was melt in the oven, cool, remove the new crayons and start the process over again. Some people use muffin tins for the mold, however, there are complaints that the regular sized muffin tins make the crayons too large for little hands. I used a silicone chocolate mold from Amazon, which I also plan to use for chocolate and homemade candies. A mini muffin pan could work too, I am sure. The other method would be to melt the crayons in a double boiler made out of a tin can, and then pour into chocolate molds.

 

My girls had so much fun making these, and I was glad that we didn’t waste all of those crayon parts.

 

How to make recycled crayons

 

What you need:

 

Instructions:

Related DIY project on MNN: How to make all sorts of kids' toys