Ok so there are 100 directions for melting crayons into new crayons so this isn't so much a tutorial as a "I did it!" post. I can't find the exact post I used originally so I cannot give credit, sorry about that.
The instructions were to cut the crayons into pea size pieces and put them in an oven at 150 degrees for like 20 minutes. If the melted crayons stick once cool, pop them in the freezer to loosen them up.
Many of online directions called for higher temperatures, I am not sure why, as I felt that wasn't needed. If you recycled crayons before and know why to use such a high temp, please share the reason and your experience with us!
Above you can see that I had the kids gather up all the broken crayons and we peeled the paper off. Then I cut them into pea size pieces and matched them up. I did browns in one. Light/dark blue in one. Dark and lime green in one. Reds in one. Yellow and purple in one (I didn't have much purple). Lastly I did orange and black in one.
Update: After this fun experiment, we found even more crayon pieces around so this will be repeated! Any suggestions on some good color combos?
So about 20 minutes later, this is what the crayons looked like. The pieces in the brown were thicker so I had to manually mix it up, you can see its a bit chunky, but the rest were fine. The colors melted at different rates which was interesting and they did their own thing. It seems some must have been lighter than others. I had mixed them when they were solid but when they melted they did whatever they wanted.
This could be a fun experiment for home school science class!
Here are the same crayons popped out and flipped over. If you compare to two pictures you can see that the colors seem to separate themselves based on weight almost, like 1 color floated on top while the other sank to the bottom. Very interesting. The kids loved the whole process from finding and peeling to coloring at the end. My daughter loved the Halloween one the best, who would have thought orange and black could be so popular?
Some original art made by Rami and Bob with their new crayons. I call this a success!!
Go out today and add some color to your world !!
Thanks for reading, Kristina