For those of you wondering what my Silent Sunday post was about here is the answer! At the start of the year I found a fantastic website that focused on recycling materials for craft making and also using eco-friendly products to make them with. One of the craft ideas I was eager to have a go at was Recycled Crayons. It’s only taken me 9 months to get round to it and last night I finally did it! I finally made some new crayons ready for Popsy and Boo’s first and third birthday party bag favours.

I have been searching for fun children’s moulds for a few weeks and finally found some from an on-line shop. They are designed for chocolate moulding but can also be used for ice cubes, candles and now crayons!

Bugs

Animals

Soaking the crayons to remove the paper

As we are currently in the process of knocking down our conservatory ready for a new one to be put up I took the opportunity to have a clear out of toys (we use it as a play room) and craft materials.  Once I’d searched for old and broken crayons (and all the free ones I’d been collecting from restaurants for this moment!) I soaked them in warm/ hot water to remove the paper covers – this was the worst part of the whole process! I have bitten short nails and my fingers were hurting after peeling and scrapping the papers off. It also took a long time to do it, probably about an hour in total!

Small, pellet-sized pieces of crayon

When I’d finally taken off all the paper I heated the oven to 180 degrees, placed the crayons back into some warm water and broke them up into small, pellet-sized pieces and dried them off. I filled the moulds with the pieces and placed them into the oven. I put the oven timer on for 15 minutes and kept watch as I was intrigued by it (small things please small minds, eh?). After about six minutes it became evident that the moulds needed topping up, so I filled them up to the top with more crayon pellets. This seemed to do the job so I left them in the oven for the remainder of the time until they were fully melted.

Then the trouble began – I hadn’t put the mould trays on a baking tray and when I tried to remove them from the oven some of the melted crayon ran off on to the bottom shelf, eeek! So to fix the running crayon problem I removed the whole shelf from the oven and waiting for the crayons to set. I then repeated the whole thing to get a second set – making 36 new crayons in total.

Et voila…. my money saving, eco-friendly recycled crayons all ready for the party bags!

A selection of recycled crayons

There were a couple of things I would do differently next time – firstly I would break a few of the brighter colours in to bigger pieces giving me a selection of sizes and secondly I would put the mould trays on to a baking tray!

Here’s a quick run down of how to make the crayons:
1. Soak crayons in warm/ hot water to remove the paper.
2. Heat the oven to 180 degrees.
3. Break up the crayons into different sizes, some big and some small.
4. Place the crayon pieces into the moulds
5. Place the mould tray on a baking tray in the oven for 15 minutes.
6. After 6 minutes top up the moulds to the top then cook for the remaining time.
7. Take the mould tray out of the oven and leave to cool.
8. Once cool, remove your brand new recycled crayons from the moulds and enjoy!

I wrote this post because I love making new things from old and for no other reason. I would also like to mention The Little Green Paintbox as this is where I got the idea from. Please pop over there as they have loads of wonderful ideas and products too!