How to make crayons (well, how we did it anyway)

I was at church, making copies of our ward newsletter and the librarian was sorting through all the crayon boxes and dropping all the broken pieces in the trash. I bit my tongue as I stapled the copies together, watching out of the corner of my eye. Then finally I couldn't take it any longer! "Are you really THROWING all those away?!? Can I have them?" She seemed awfully surprised that I would want these tiny bits of useless wax. "You want them?" "Yes, the kids and I can melt them down and make new crayons out of them!" "Oh, you can do that?" Okay, so I'm going on faith here, because I've seen it done on various blogs, but I have never actually done it myself, but I knew we could do it.

We brought all the crayons home and went through our bag or crayons to find all the broken pieces. The girls and I crowded around the table and got to peeling. I discovered this was a much easier task if I first sliced the wrapper lengthwise with the tip of a steak knife.

 We sorted all the crayons by color (a great activity for preschoolers) and placed the pieces in silicone tart molds and a muffin mold for the smaller ones. The oven was heated to 300 and the crayons were heated for about 15 minutes. I don't think it really matters how cool or hot, or how long that you leave them in there, just keep an eye to see if they are melted yet. After that, they went right into the fridge to harden.

 They came out of the pans quite easily. It might have been a good idea to spray the insides with vegetable oil, since the mold with the brown crayons now has a brown ring. Also, I think the cheapy crayons from the restaurants separated. The tops of the green, red and blue crayons don't write. The wax on top has no pigment in them. I don't know if stirring it right when it came out of the oven would have helped or not.

 I found another mold at a thrift store this week ^^^like these^^^ from IKEA that would be perfect for this kind of project, but they wouldn't sell it to me because the tag came off. I was totally bummed.