Valentine's Crayons

So, we made heart shaped crayons for Jacks's class last year for Valentine's Day, which were a huge hit. I agonized over good gift ideas to make for this year, but I didn't come up with much. But as I was picking up spilled crayons the other night from the corners and crevices of the living room, it occurred to me that making heart shaped crayons every year isn't such a bad idea. It helps us clean up and clean out all the old crayons without throwing them away.

Since last year's night of crayon creation, several of my friends have asked for directions on how to make these heart shaped gems. Although I stole the idea from my friend Holly, I will gladly share my own tips and ideas for how to complete this project.

First, gather old crayons and group according to color. I tend to group them by reds/pinks, blues/purples, yellows/oranges, greens, and neutrals (black, gray, metallic, white). A big part of the fun is combining the different shades of colors to create new colors.

Then begins the worst part of the project, stripping the paper labels. This can be hell on your nails, so I do not recommend doing this the night after a manicure. I used a little paring knife to zip up the sides of the labels, but for two years running I have managed to poke myself in the pad of my thumb.
Someone told me that Hobby Lobby sells naked crayons. That is really great and sounds like a fingernail saver, but it defeats the purpose of this being a reduce/reuse/recycle project. Plus buying new crayons just to melt them down seems a little silly to me. I'd rather use my old free ones, then buy a new 64 Crayola pack to enjoy for later!

I melt the crayons down in aluminum, disposable muffin pans. And I don't mean tin muffin cup liners, but the entire pans. I managed to find these at Winn Dixie for a little less than $5 for three 6 muffin pans, but they were buy one get one free, so I have another set for another day.


Notice that I cut up the pans. I wanted to have stiff, individual trays for each color that I can pick up and easily pour from. If the pan stayed in tact, I would have to scoop out the melted wax, which would make a hella mess.

Then break your crayons down and fill your individual tin trays about half full by color.
Do you see my sore spot I developed under my thumbnail from stripping crayon labels? At one point I couldn't tell if it was red crayon wax or blood. No one said crafting was painless!!

Lay out your tins on a foil lined sheet pan. The wax WILL drip, so you want to be sure to protect your pan. The trays are overfilled in the picture below, but it made for a much cooler picture to see all the colors spread out like that.

Then place your pan in the oven set to 250. I found that 200 is too low, and 300 is a little too high. So split the difference and be patient. The crayons will melt in about 10 minutes or less. You will want to stir around your melted wax to make the colors smoother. I used toothpicks, but then resorted to plastic knives after a while. The wax will harden quickly, so you'll want to act fast. Of course, if the wax hardens too quickly, no big deal - just melt it again!

Once melted, you pour the wax into heart shaped molds, and that rubbery material works the best so you can efficiently poke out your finished product when done. I found ice cube trays at the Dollar Tree, of which I got 4. I also saw some sort of a pan at Target in the Valentine aisle that would work. I don't think they were ice cube trays, possibly candy molds. But they were 9.99 each. My Dollar Tree molds worked into my budget much better.

At this point, you will find that they will harden very quickly on the counter top. But, I started to pop them out, and found that they were still a little soft. So, if you place your trays in the freezer for about 3 or 4 minutes, they'll get hard enough to pop out without leaving an indention anywhere. You don't want to leave them in the freezer for too long, or else they will crack.

Then you'll just continue melting and pouring until you're out of wax. Toward the end, I would pop out the residue at the bottom of the trays and combine them with another tray, and I started to get creative with colors - mixing reds and oranges, browns and greens, blues and purples, etc...

Look at how precious these are all laid out!Also, residue is left behind in the ice cube trays with each batch of crayons. So, if you don't want to have color mixing going on, you'll want to keep certain colors in certain spots in the molds. But, I kind of liked the marbling effect that would be created from pouring green wax into a spot where I had previously made yellow or pink.

Honestly, this project is not all that deep. You're basically melting crayons and pouring them into molds. But, the logistics can get a little tricky. And you'll end up doing several rounds in order to get everything completely melted and pourable.

Basically.....

• Don't use your own double boiler or ramekin dishes or anything you want to use for food later. You can probably get it clean eventually, but that crayon wax sticks around for a while.

• Also, your house will smell like crayon wax for a while. It's okay, it goes away.

• Protect your sheet pan - I can't enforce that enough!!!

• Don't forget that you're dealing with hot wax - be careful. The temp is relatively low, but those muffin tins can get hot. They can be hard to handle with a hot pad or dishrag, so if you have a pair of heavy duty dish gloves, they can prove to be helpful when handling the hot pans.

• If you have a white crayon that won't melt after going back in the oven 3 or 4 times, it is probably a piece of chalk that got mixed up with the crayons!
  

Let's have one more look at our new Valentine's creations.....

To give these as gifts, I have some small gift boxes that I found at the Dollar Tree. Each child will get about 8 crayons plus a color sheet. My bright idea is to print out something (maybe a Chinese dragon?) on a half sheet of card stock (length-wise), then fold it up accordion style to place down inside the box. I will post pictures of how it all turns out.

I had a little more difficulty with Nealy's class, and I'm still working on it. I found some small plastic heart shaped boxes at the Dollar Tree that resemble largish pill boxes (I tend to gravitate to pill boxes because I love them so. Which says a lot about me.). I didn't really know what I planned to do with them once I got them, but I really liked the looks of them so I bought a few packs of 8 (when everything costs a dollar, I tend to feel that I can buy A LOT - and I wonder why I have a clutter problem). Now I'm thinking of putting a few dried beans inside, hot gluing them shut, and giving them as rattles. I'll keep you posted on that one....

Happy Valentine's Day everyone. It's still like a week away, right? Wait, what day is today?

Oh yeah, and as always, Joe was my perfect assistant and photographer in this project. Did y'all know I rarely complete a crafting project without his help? He's awesome.