Eco-Friendly Green Crafts from Recycled Materials

For parents who want to teach their kids about going green and being eco-friendly, the best place to start is with simple things we throw away at home. Households with young children often have an abundance of broken crayons and dryer lint which often gets wasted in the trash. Both of these household items can make great eco-friendly green crafts for kids and parents to enjoy together.

Dryer lint is notorious as a fire starter, and can be re-used in the fire pace easily. However, dryer lint also makes a great, eco-friendly clay for kids to make new, green crafts with. Save the dryer lint for a rainy day and combine it with household materials for a no-cost, green craft material.

Tear a few cups of dryer lint into smaller chunks. Your kids will have fun tearing into the soft, strange material and can learn about how a dryer works in the process. Place the dryer lint in a pot on the stove with two cups of water. Begin to heat it and add one cup of flour. Stir the dryer lint, adding oil if necessary, until it begins to get a consistency. Pour the dryer lint mixture onto a safe surface with wax paper. After it cools to the touch, let your children make any kind of eco-friendly craft they choose.

Dryer lint clay can be molded into fun rabbit shapes for "Dust Bunnies" or used to make thumb pots or jewelry just like regular clay. Talk to your kids about how much money is saved by making crafts from home materials instead of buying commercial clay. Let them think of creative used for the eco-friendly craft material and ways they can "go green" with their new dryer lint discovery.

When your kids have finished their green crafts, allow them to dry. This process will take close to a week, which is the only set-back from not using commercial clay. Thicker dryer lint clay crafts will take many days to completely dry. Once the eco-friendly kids crafts have dried, decorate them with paint, glitter or paper scraps.

Instead of throwing away those odds and ends of broken crayons, turn them into a green craft your kids can re-use. Eco-friendly recycled crayons circles are quick, easy green crafts which get your children into the mindset of finding ways to avoid waste. They also make neat gift additions for birthdays back-to-school gift bags.

First, gather all the broken crayons and wax coloring sticks you would have thrown away. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees. Place foil cupcake or muffin liners on a baking sheet. Fill the bottom of the foil liners with a layer of crayon pieces, about one-half inch full.

Place the baking sheet in the oven for about five minutes. Gently pull out the sheet and see if the crayon pieces have melted into each other. They should just liquefy enough to melt into the mold without becoming so thin they mix colors. Do not try to stir the crayon pieces of you will mix the colors into a brown.

Your kids can experiment with crushing the crayons ends into smaller pieces for a more varied color scheme in their eco-friendly craft or leaving them as larger pieces for chunks of color. Play around with different designs in your recycled crayon circles too.

Place a yellow piece of crayon in the center of the mold. Then place slightly longer colored pieces, like pink or red, pointing out from the center like a star. Crush a green crayon and cover the top so the green pieces fill in between all the other, bigger crayon bits. After the crayon circle has melted and cooled it will look like a flower on the bottom. Challenge your children to make hearts, stars, and letters in their recycled crayon crafts.

For a truly eco-friendly green craft, you can also use shaped silicone baking molds in small stars, hearts and other shapes for special recycled crafts. The silicone baking molds are reusable, so you do not have the waste of the foil baking cups.

Although stirring several colors together gives you brown, you can try combining complementing shades in the mold, like white and red. When the crayons have melted, use a stick to gently swirl them into a spiral in the center. Where the colors blend you will have a nice pink but retain the red and white swirl in the recycled craft.

Throw a few of these fun, recycled crayon circles into a small sandwich bag and tie it closed with ribbon for a simple, eco-friendly, green party favor at birthdays. This is also a great green craft for kids to make at eco-friendly birthday parties or during Sunday school and green class activities.