We made melted crayon shapes!
We definitely had some fun, but it wasn't the easiest project!
I followed the instructions from this post.
We gathered our old and broken crayons.
Then we peeled the paper off.
This part was difficult because most of the paper was really stuck down and I had to really use my thumb nail to pull it off, thus getting chucks of crayon stuck underneath my nail like bamboo torture. But we moms go through pains to have fun with our kiddos, right? :)
Then we broke all the pieces and divided them into silicone molds.
We baked them for 15 minutes at 230 degrees F.
They may look like they aren't melted enough, but don't bake them longer. If you do, they'll be too hard to color with. (My friend discovered this to be true when she put hers back into the oven when she thought they weren't melted enough. She also used off-brand crayons; not sure if that had anything to do with the hardness, though).
Tip: put the silicone pans on a cookie sheet when you put them into the oven. I didn't do this and they were difficult to pull out of the oven with oven mitts without dipping the mitts in the melted crayons.
We let them cool for about 30 minutes and then popped them out of the molds.
The silicone molds we used released the crayons easily, but there was a little crayon residue left on the molds that was a bit tricky to get off. I stuck it in the top rack of the dishwasher and it all came off fine.
My little dude liked playing with the crayons more than coloring with them.
They weren't super easy to color with (probably because of the shape of the silicone we used), but they were fun.
I probably wouldn't repeat this project. I'm glad that I tried it, and my little man had fun doing it with me, but the result wasn't really worth the effort. (My thumb nail is killing me as I'm typing this, haha).
It was a fun and unique project that I enjoyed doing with little man; the time we spent together was priceless. :)
All photos were taken by me using my new Nikon D3400!