I just love this clever idea of recycling old crayons! What a perfect DIY project for any young, budding artist in the family. Get the kiddos to gather up all the broken crayons from the nooks and crannies around the house (trust me, the kids know all the best hiding spots for such things), and then you can begin sorting the colors!

We went with a gradient theme for most of our crayons, so we grouped similar colors together. You, of course, can do whatever you like! Be careful not to put too many colors in the same mold, as they could potentially all melt into an unintentional brown color. This might be a fun opportunity to teach kids about mixing colors to make new colors – blue and red melt together to make purple, yellow and blue melt together to make green, etc. See what we did in the video below!

Supplies:

– Old crayons

– X-acto knife

– Silicone trays with different shapes

– Oven

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 200.

2. Peel off paper from crayons by cutting along the paper edge with an X-acto knife.

3. Break the crayons into smaller pieces and arrange into the mold by similar colors (so they don’t all melt into brown).

4. Place molds on a cookie sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes, or until crayons are completely melted.

5. Carefully remove the cookie sheet from the oven and let crayons cool. You can speed the process up by placing the cookie sheet in the freezer.

6. Once everything is cooled and hardened, remove your new crayons by first gently pulling and stretching the molds to loosen the crayons, then pushing the crayons up from the bottom.