Eliza's crayon collection has gotten a little shabby looking. She doesn't break crayons on purpose (most of the time), but she does like to press hard with them. So you can guess how quickly we go through the normal slender crayons. :)
When I went to Virginia to visit my family earlier this month, we stopped at IKEA. I had been wanting to get some of their silicon ice cube trays for a while now to make recycled crayons. So $1.99 later, I was in possession of a very nice fishy ice cube tray. (Don't think that's all I bought, though...)
Today I decided to peel the papers from the broken crayons (hardest part of the whole process, trust me) and start making crayons.
First I preheated the oven to 250F. Then I broke the crayons into small pieces, sorted them out by color, and then placed the broken bits into the fishy tray. Eliza really enjoyed helping me sort them.
I was a little nervous about the ice cube tray melting, as I'd heard happened to some people who tried this, so I placed the filled tray onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper just in case. Then I baked the crayons at 250F for about 15 minutes. By about 8 minutes, they were about half melted, so I recommend heating checking on them every couple of minutes while the crayons are melting.
After they were melted, I put the ice cube tray in the freezer for 20 minutes and they were hard enough to remove from the tray at that time.
And in case you're wondering, this is what the tray looked like when I was done removing them. I expected the tray to be ruined (or possibly melted), but after soaking it in warm soapy water most of the crayon scrubbed off. I still won't use it for ice, but it is a fun shape for crayons.
Enjoy!
Love, K&E
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