Sunday, November 1, 2009

Drawing in Style

My kids find nothing in life more spectacular than sitting at the table with a fresh box of crayons and a stack of brand new crisp white paper and coloring.

We go through alot of crayons. I'm talking alot. Like more than most people should. Brayden presses down hard when he's coloring and they accidentally snap. Gage is only two, and while he understands the concept of coloring pictures he has no idea how to be nice with the little colorful sticks that are the wonders of crayons.

In the midst of all of those crayons we go thorough we end up with tons and tons of broken little crayon bits and pieces that no longer get touched and are looked over for the new crayons with their fancy sharp points (who unknowingly will meet the same fate at their broken and stubby crayon brothers and sisters).

Its Halloween of course (or at least it was yesterday) and that means along with the other festivities that Brayden will be having a party at school and I have to think of something fun and creative to send in.

I could go the candy route or the cupcake/cookies route ... but something tells me that the 19 kids in the classroom are certainly not going to be lacking in the area of sweet treats.

So I decided to be the fun mom at the school Halloween party and bring something in that my kids love, enjoy, and will spark their creativity.

Oh, and it didn't cost me a dime - definatly can't forget to mention that part!


Homemade Crayons!!

They were a huge hit and I was able to clean out the box of broken crayon bits as well, making something cool, creative, and educational!


Make some homemade shapped crayons of your own!!

1. Preheat oven to 250

2. Peel the paper off of all of the crayon pieces that you want to use and break them into small pieces, around 1 inch or smaller

3. Fill a silicone mold with the pieces adding whatever color combonation you want your crayons to come out as. (Make sure you use regular crayons! The washable ones will leave a layer of clear wax on top. Good old fashioned Crayola are what we went with.)


4. Stick the molds on a cookie sheet and bake until the wax is melted completely, about 15-20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool and harden. If you're adding multiple colors to the same mold make sure that you let them rest on a stable surface to harden so the wax doesn't move around and blend together because it if does you'll end up with a brown crayon instead of a fun color swirled one.

5. Once they are cooled and hardened flip your mold upside down and pop out the crayons and get drawing!

4 comments:

  1. Ooh we made crayons a few months ago, but ours didn't look that cool, haha. My neighbor brought over crayon bits, and we just melted them down in cupcake papers. They ended up looking like reeses peanut butter cups, actually, haha.

    We should make some christmas crayons though, that would be fun.

    Your crayons look great!

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  2. Great idea! I never considered using a silicone pan.... I've got a heart-shaped one, too! Thanks for the tute :)

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