52 Weeks of Pinterest - Project 5

My big plan was to make this a craft project.  K and I would gather all her old crayons, sort them by color, and watch as they melted.  Things didn't go as planned at all!  First off I didn't realize how long it took to peel the wrappers off, I think because these crayons were moved from Ohio to Texas in the middle of summer in a moving truck and the wrappers were somewhat melted into the crayons.  K's interest was immediately lost!  One page suggested cutting down the sides of the wrappers with a utility knife to make it easier, but my stubborn self refused to take such an easy shortcut.  So I removed the wrappers at night and broke them into pieces.  Morning rolled around and I though K could help me sort through them and make piles of color groups.  Again she would have nothing to do with it, but she did play with the crayon bits quite a bit, mostly making faces on plates with the pieces.  So, again I waited until bedtime to sort them.  Then I filled the silicone baking sheet I had with little people shaped designs.  I got the baking sheet at Walmart in their party area with cake decorating supplies.

I thought about waiting until morning to let K watch them melt, but she has camp this week and making it out the door is tough enough, and I'm impatient and couldn't wait to see how it worked!  I started out by putting them in a 250 degree oven (suggestions ranged from 200-275 so I just went around the middle) and setting the timer for 8 minutes.  After 8 minutes about half of the crayons were melted.  THe crayons were a mixture of Crayola, Rose Art, and restaurant crayons and they did not all melt at the same time.  I keep setting the timer for 5 minutes and checking.  By the time they were all melted it was close to 40 minutes in the oven.  They definitely cooked for too long, but it was the only way to get them all to melt.

 The finished products:

 The colors separated and there is a milky layer at the bottom of each crayon that doesn't write.  It frustrated K for a minute until she learned to hold the crayon the other way.

 Each crayon turned out with just a little concavity on the bottom, which makes for perfect stacking!  K stacked crayons for a very long time while I prepped breakfast this morning.

 I'd say this was a pretty successful pin!  I can't wait until B can get his little hands on these!