WOYC21: ARTSY THURSDAY- We made Crayons!! Here's How...

It was a gorgeous, perfect day today… Most of our time was spent enjoying the outside and celebrating the good weather!

But your Common Ground Office Friends had a silly, fun, totally “Artsy Thursday” inspiration that we absolutely had to act on.

We decided to turn our GIANT TUB of broken, old crayons into new, tie-dye crayons in totally whacky shapes!

Ms. Mimi had seen the idea during one of her Teaching courses last week, and we LOVED it! Ms. Liz ran out to Michael’s to get some fun molds and we went to work! See below for pictures of our process and results!

1. Peel the crayons. If you want to make this process go a little faster, soak them in water! the wrapper comes right off.

2. Chop them up! They don’t need to be uniform. We used scissors (poor scissors!) and made a bunch of tiny chunks. Leave some of the chunks bigger, we’ll explain why later!

3. We used silicone molds with all sorts of different shapes! They can go in the microwave, the oven, and the freezer, so they’re perfect.

4. Place a layer of crayons in the molds. fill it up! When they crayons melt, they’ll shrink. Since these will completely melt and mix together, we advice complimentary colors.

5. Place in the microwave. 1-2 minute intervals should do it.

6. Once the wax is completely melted, place one of the larger chunks in the center of each mold shape. It will create a marbled look with the other colors you added. This color can be as different from the other colors as you like! You can also add another layer instead.

7. Put it into the microwave for a little bit longer, and then when you’re satisfied put it into the freezer until it’s firm and cool.

8. We got a uniform back onto the crayons by melting one or two colors into cups and then pouring a layer of wax into the molds once they had firmed up a bit in the freezer.

9. The result is, dare we say it, ADORABLE and totally functional! We gave them out to all of our students, and we have so many leftover crayons we plan on letting them make their own combinations in the future! It was such a bright, happy way to recycle our old crayons that no one seemed to want. Some of our kids did not even want to color with them! We had a couple of our Honeybee Students play with their robots like toys.