A Star-Studded Meltdown

No, I’m not about to blog about last night’s Oscars.  I’m blogging about crayons.

My two older kids are coloring snobs and will no longer color with crayons.  They have moved onto bigger and better instruments like twist-up colored pencils and fine-tip markers.  So, we were left with an entire drawer full of beautiful Crayolas.

When I found this…

…while shopping this past weekend, I knew that I wanted to make Cap’n Jack Henry his first set of crayons, using all of those old, forgotten, discarded wretches pictured above.

Here’s how I did it…

First, remove the paper from the crayons.

This would be a good job to enlist some older kids to help, but unfortunately mine were busy.  Bonny Annie was making soap, and Dirty Harry was playing baseball with his dad, so I was on my own for all of the crayon peeling.  I thought the pile of crayon paper shavings was very attractive and tried to think of some creative craft project for them, but I couldn’t get beyond hair for one of those Fandango paper bag puppets, so I just threw them away.

Then you will need to break up your crayons in 4-5 pieces each and place then in the muffin cups.

As you can see, I went with  more monochromatic tones for Jack Henry’s since he doesn’t even know his colors yet, but one could get wildly creative with all kinds of combinations, depending on what colors of crayons you have on hand.

Then you just pop them into a 200 degree oven for about 30 minutes.  Obviously, oven temperatures vary from household to household, so just start keeping an eye on them at about 15 minutes in.  The crayon pieces need to be completely melted.  Also, since I was using a silicon muffin pan, I placed a cookie sheet underneath to prevent spilling the hot wax.

When they are melted, you will then need to let them cool completely.  This took about an hour.  With the silicon trays, they came out rather easily, but I think you could have success with a regular muffin tin as well.

I loved how they turned out!  So bright, so swirly!  (But I was a little bothered by this picture where the orange one is not point-to-point with the others.  I didn’t realize that until I was uploading the pictures.  I apologize for the imperfection of this site and its author.)

Jack Henry, at fifteen months old, is probably a little young yet for crayons, but we tried them with him anyway.

I found the star shape to be perfect for his little fingers.  He liked holding and feeling them just as much as coloring with them.  These types of muffin tins are available in all sorts of shapes and sizes.  I’ve even spotted some seasonal ones in the Target dollar section from time to time.  Wouldn’t egg shapes be the perfect thing for an Easter basket?  When I find some more, I’ll definitely be experimenting because I think a set of these would also be a great birthday gift, tied with some pretty ribbon and accompanied by a thick pad of drawing paper or a fun coloring book.

You had to know this was coming, but the Cap’n did think they were edible.  But then he thinks everything is edible these days.

Aren’t we all glad that crayons are non-toxic?

He did make some scribbles on some paper and giggled at their effects.

I gave him two of the stars, and he enjoyed clapping them together.

And then, of course, he did a little more taste-testing.

They turned out so well and were so easy that I made six more colors this morning:  teal, pink, brown, white, black and gray.  I’m going to look around for a nice little tin to keep them in, and I’ll have one more activity in my arsenal to keep Jack Henry busy while we try to do our lessons.

I was originally inspired for this craft by the website www.dollarstorecrafts.com .  When you have a minute, you should browse around this site.  They have a lot of handy ideas for things to make and do using very inexpensive materials.

Now, go forth and have a meltdown.  (I’ll bet you won’t hear that again!)