Nifty Thrifty Gifty: Crayons

This is a craft I’ve done before with my kids, and this Christmas season made as a gift for some of their friends.  It’s a fun way to use up bits of crayons:

For this gift, we unwrapped crayons and broke them up into little pieces.  I had this sun-shaped pan from a previous craft.

 

 

 

  




The kids had a lot of fun helping!  After we’d put enough crayon bits into each mould, I put it in my toaster oven, on a medium heat so as not to warp then pan while melting the crayons. (Lesson learned from past experience).


After the wax was all cooled down, I pushed them gently out of the sun shapes.  I snapped a few getting them out, and realized that if I ran the underside of the pan in hot water for a few minutes, it softened up the edges just enough to make it easy to pop the crayons out.


This time, we made each crayon one colour to make a nice set as a gift, but in the past I have done this with mixed up shades of left over bits, and the kids still love using them.  A fun activity, even if you aren’t planning on giving them away.  If you don’t have moulds in shapes, like this one, or chocolate moulds that can be picked up pretty cheap at any store, you can always make them in muffin tins, or even use a bunch of tin cans.  I wouldn’t use a pan or mould you intend to use for food again in the future though, since it does stain and leach colour into the silicone of the pans.

I feel almost silly to admit that in the end, my total cost for this gift was $0.  Made entirely out of stuff we had on hand, it’s a great idea to keep in mind.