Recycled Heart Shaped Crayons

Over the years my husband and I have created a bucket of crayons. When we find them around the house (which is inevitable when you have little kids and encourage them to create) we toss them into a plastic pail. One day last week I got the pail out and turned to get the cardboard we were going to draw on. My cute little boy giggled and dumped roughly 300 broken crayons on the floor...

Okay. That is just insane. Why is there a pail with that many broken crayons in it? Who wants to use a tiny little crayon? But... I hate to throw away something I can use in another way. Of course, I thought... I could make candles, use the crayons to color the wax, blah blah blah. I don't have time to make hand poured candles. I also don't want to invest a ton of money into reusing broken crayons. So scratch that idea.

The pail went back to the normal spot and I moved on.

A few days later I saw silicone molds at WalMart in heart shapes. I found $3 and some change to be a better investment and a way to use the broken crayons.

I went home and decided oh this is such a super easy idea! Even I can do this without running into a snag!

So I grabbed the pail of crayon mess and thought I would slip the sleeve of the crayon right off and be in business.

Not so, I quickly found out as I was digging at the paper, getting wax under my nails and rethinking the entire thing. What a pain in the butt! {Mr}Adam, darling husband, came to the rescue. He kindly used his pocket knife and helped me to cut the paper so it was easy to peel off.

 After the paper was removed I broke the crayon (if it wasn't already broken) in half.

 I filled the silicon molds to the brim with broken crayons. I went for general color mixture. (All shades of red mixed together, all green, etc.)

 After about 7 minutes in a 350 degree oven they were completely melted.

I could have added a few more broken crayons to make a thicker heart crayon or taken a few away for thinner ones. I liked the ones I made as is.

I allowed the melted crayons to cool completely in the silicon molds. Getting them out of the molds was as easy as could be.

Since this was one project I know I can handle and repeat without any issue I decided to give all 30 that I made to {Mr} Adam, husband extraordinaire, for the classroom Valentines Party.

After my husband stepped in and helped me with the crayon sleeve this project was really easy and fun too. I am planning to find other silicone molds and try different designs.

On a side note, I had 2 odd shaped ice cube trays. One was an ocean them, one an ice tube type. I decided to try these out too.

While it did work, I found the silicone option to be easier. With the ice cube trays I found I had to give them a light spray of cooking spray stuff. Then I had to wipe down the recycled crayons after removing them from the mold to make sure they weren't greasy. (For my time and effort I prefer the silicon trays).

I realize this would have been perfect for a Valentines Day post, but it is really a perfect after Valentines Day craft because you can probably get the silicone molds super cheap on clearance now.

The next batch I make I think I will add one color that is off in each one. I am thinking one blue in a group of green. One red in a group of pink and so on to make the colors unique and fun.

This is the end result.

They were pretty cute and I was thrilled that I made this with next to no drama.

Until next time,
Sweet Silly Sara