Crayola Payola

We have no more Christmas gifts to make.  We're done.  Finally.  We can put all the magnets, fabric, felt, and glue away for a while.  The last thing we did was pretty cool.  You know all of those broken down crayons in the bottom of your kid's box?  Turns out you can re-use them, which is good for us, because the kids can't seem to color a picture without breaking at least one crayon.

 You'll need:

Broken down crayons
Candy Mold
Tin Cans
A Pot

Before you get started, you'll want to save up some tin cans.  So, next time you crack open some green beans, be sure to set those cans aside.  We didn't think about this before we started, so the girl and I had a Spaghetti-O eating marathon.  Four empty cans later we were ready to start.

First you want to unwrap all the crayons and sort them out by color.  The girl loved this part.  She's all about ripping up things.

This is about all the kids can help you with.  From here on out it's adults only.  Things are about to heat up, so while you fire up the stove top, have the kids clean up that mess.

It's important to teach your kids to clean up after your messes. This will free up more time for yourself.

While they are doing that, you need to grab a pot and start boiling some water.  If you have any large pieces of crayon, break them up into smaller pieces.  Once the water is boiling, place your crayon pieces into a tin can and set the tin can into the water.  If you are making multiple colors, you're better off using the color spectrum order.  In other words, make yellow crayons first, then orange, then red.  Make green, then blue, then purple, brown, and black. You get the idea.

We made the mistake of using red first. These cans don't wash easily, so we had to toss it to make our next batch.

Crayons melt quick and the can heats up in no time at all.  Grab some mittens and somethings to stir that mix with.



When your crayon mix looks like some kind of soup that you'd find in a Dr. Seuss book, you're ready to pour your crayons.  Lay out your candy molds and start pouring.  Don't be an idiot; use protection.

When you're done with one color, you can try to clean that tin can out, or you can save yourself the headache and just use another one.  The next can we did yellow, orange, and green in without mixing the colors too badly.  Just rinse out the can and wipe it down the best you can and move on.  Once you have all of your candy molds filled you can stick them in the freezer for a few minutes to harden them up.

Pull your molds out of the freezer, pop them out and you have yourself some brand new crayons for the kids to break.

Find more Christmas Gifts To Make.