This month we’re celebrating back to school and our fall favorites! We’ll be sharing our favorite DIY’s, personalized growth charts, tees from our big sister tshirt and big brother tshirt collection, kids activities, recipes, and more. We’re sure to have a lot of fun together.
So let’s start it off right with everyone kid’s favorite, CRAYONS!! Did you know you can make your own shaped crayons?! It’s totally easy too, just follow this month’s Handmade by Hillary …
You will need:
- Crayons — old or new it doesn’t matter
- Molds — silicone molds or chocolate molds work just fine
To get started …
STEP ONE peel all of the wrappers off of your crayons
STEP TWO break your crayons up in to little pieces. We broke each crayon up in to 3 or 4 pieces. We chose to color coordinate my crayons, but you could mix all the colors up too for a multicolored crayon. This would be a great step for little helpers!!
There are 2 ways you can go about melting and moulding your crayons, choose whichever works best for you!
Method One
STEP ONE preheat your oven to 225
STEP TWO take the broken crayon pieces and place them in your molds
STEP THREE place them in the oven for about 10-15 minutes. The colors will all melt together. Here is what it looks like when you take it out of the oven …
STEP FOUR let them cool and then pop them out of their molds.
What we thought about this method… for this fish mold, we had a hard time getting the crayons out without breaking the tails off. So when choosing molds, be sure to choose a simple shape without thin areas.
Also, we had some glitter crayons in my mix so you can see some of the glitter on some of our fish. We totally dig the effect of seeing the different colors in the crayon.
And finally, the silicone mold produced more of a dull finish on the finished crayon.
Method Two
STEP ONE take your like colored crayons and stick them in a paper cup or microwave safe dish that you don’t care about ruining. We used the same cup for all of the colors —just start with the lightest color first and it won’t matter if some of the previous color mixes in.
STEP TWO microwave on high until the crayons are all melted. This took us about 10 minutes and our mug was about 1/4 full. Here is what our mug looked like when we were finished melting crayons …
STEP THREE poor the colors into your molds and let them harden.
STEP FIVE once the crayons have cooled, you can pop them out.
What we thought about this method… the plastic molds gave the crayons more of a shiny finish. If you are doing this method, everything you put in the mug will melt together. If you put a bunch of different colors in your mug to melt, you will most likely come out with a brown or muddy colored crayon. This method works best with crayon colors that are similar to each other.
Whichever method you chose, your little one will sure love the end product!
