Recycled Crayons

Chop crayons and sort bits into colour groups

There are many examples of these around.  Not as easy do make perfectly as people would have you believe.  Lots of fun though.  No more snapped crayon bits with these.

We tried a few methods:

Fill paper cases on cupcake tray

Melted at approx 90 deg Celsius.  Probably not hot enough to completely melt all types of crayon we used.  Makes some nice textured toppings for some of the crayon cupcakes though

Children enjoyed peeling off the paper.  Such gorgeous crayons and definitely child-break-proof now

• A similar method we tried was melting directly in a silicon ice cube tray.  Ikea have a great range and there's no need to oil the tray first.  Does stain the tray though.  However, we have continued to use the tray to make ice with no ill effects.... so far.

Totally melted this time.  Tried a little hotter - about 120 deg Celcius

Voila.  A perfect crayon cross.  Didn't get round to making the noughts.

• We even had a go with cookie cutter shapes and play dough shapes.  We rolled out a thick base of playdough, pressed shapes into it and poured melted crayon into them and left to set.

• And we also found some jelly cups to use as moulds.  So after all the children ate the jellies, we rinsed them and poured a couple of colours in.  It required a lot more crayon wax than we were expecting, but makes for a more interesting crayon.

• Wax needs to be heated at a hotter temperature if you are pouring into a mould as it cools very quickly.  Can heat in a tin can in a saucepan with boiling water or heat directly in the oven.  Keep an eye on it though, as I forgot once and the smell is awful.  It even smells bad once crayon has set.