How-To Make Fun Shaped Crayons

First of all, collect crayons from a school teacher friend at the end of the school year. Then sort and peel your crayons. Slitting the paper with an exacto knife works well but I don't have one so I just used a veggie peeler to get them started. They can be time consuming so enlist the help of the kids or use evening times when you settle into a favorite movie!



Crayons can be melted into any shape of your choice, you just need a mold. Round crayons are easy to do. These may be done in lightly sprayed muffin tins or on a cookie sheet with unsprayed foil muffin cups. Place in a preheated 250 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.

Allow them to cool to room temperature before removing from foil. Trim any rough edges with a paring knife. Foil may be reused for the same color if you're careful.
White plastic sucker molds (not the clear chocolate ones!) can also be used in the oven if you place an old kitchen towel folded in half on the cookie sheet and put the candy mold on top of it. Lightly spraying the mold with pan spray will make cleanup easy, which I forgot to do!
Place it in the oven at 250 degrees for 20 minutes.
No need to worry about the place for the stick. When the crayon has cooled to room temp, you can lift the crayon out of the mold and simply break it off.
These are some of my old crayons in addition to the new ones. I prefer molds that are thick and have a point, for obvious reasons, but the kids really liked the teddy bears and candy canes.

So there you have it! Crayons that you don't have to premelt and try to pour while hot! If you wish to swirl the colors, carefully stir them once or twice with a popsicle stick just after you take them from the oven. By-the-way, those sucker molds can take candy temperatures up to 350 degrees. Be sure not to put them directly on metal. Because they can take higher temperatures than you need for this activity I think they'll do this over and over again just fine if you follow
these simple guidelines.

And above all, have fun!!