Crayons

I found this idea on Pinterest (of course) to make crayons with pieces of old crayons and LOVED the idea.  But, I don't have any kids and I would have to make a lot for my classroom so I thought what a great thing to put at the kids table for the wedding.  I will just have the venue put a paper table "cloth" down and the kids can color all over it like in some restaurants.  I was thinking of also putting aquarium themed, since we are getting married at the aquarium, coloring pages for the kids.  I had to use tips from a bunch of different websites and do a lot of trial and error.  So I am just going to tell you what worked for me.  As a teacher I have TONS of little pieces of crayons in my classroom and I have asked the other teachers for help.  If you don't have access to crayons like I do, you can ask local restaurants to save you broken pieces of crayons.  Make sure all the paper is off, I peeled almost all of mine with the help of some eager kindergartners, but there is a much easier way.  Put all the crayons in water and after a few minutes the paper will just start unraveling.  Make sure they are in small pieces, most people said under an inch, but lets be honest, I have a life I refuse to spend my day slicing up crayons and chasing after the pieces that fly across the kitchen.  I used a silicone mold that I got in the dollar section of target and put cooking spray on the inside of the molds.  I am not sure if that is 100% necessary but used it because some sites said to do it and others didn't say if they used it.  I just sprayed the bottom not the sides so it is probably not a big deal.  I cooked it at 300 for 15 minutes.  I did check mine half way through because I filled the molds but after they crayons melted down they were only about half way full.  At that time I added more crayon pieces and kept cooking it.  The time just depends on when the crayons are melted, it could take longer it could take less them.

It takes about an hour for them to cool, but me being the inpatient person I am, that was tooooooo long.  So I decided to put them in the fridge, once they set up, about 20 min, just turn the mold inside out and they are done.  Once mine were out of the mold they were still warm and a little soft so I put them back in the fridge.  I like having them all one color, like crayons are, but I did do a few that were multi colored.  And some of my solid ones are semi multi colored.  When doing the multi colored ones you want to make sure there aren't to many of the same color together.  What I did was put all my colors in a row and took one from each pile till it was filled.  I also put the small pieces of crayon where I thought they would show best.  I only had 2 light blue so I made sure they were on the edge of the mold so it could be seen and used.  When doing the multi colored ones you will also want to make sure you have smaller pieces.  When you cut them do it on cardboard so you don't have crayon in your cutting board.

Another thing I did in the second batch was put tinfoil under the mold, that way if some spills it will be easy clean up.