Recycle Old Crayons to Make New Ones

Crayons are one of the most used color techniques used by children and artists. For some reason when crayons get to a certain length or become broken they are discarded like yesterday's news. This becomes a sad day for crayons because they are no longer wanted, loved or used.

Now is the time to save those poor crayons and bring them back to crayon life. While in the process of recessitating a crayon, you can give the crayon a new face, a new body, and a new life with this all in one procedure.

After all, crayons can't be sent to the retirement home because they are never old enough to live there. However, once you have created the new life for these discarded crayons, you can donate them to retirement homes for seniors to use for entertainment.

Materials for Homemade Cookie Shape Crayons

• Old worn out crayons. These are the crayons that have been decommissioned by your children.
• Double boiler. This will be used to help to bring the discarded crayons back to life.
• Small cake or baking pans. The pan will be used as your surgery table for creating the cookie shapes.
• Wax paper. The wax paper is for the surgery table, the flat pan, as a sheet so the melted crayons do not get cold.
• Cookie cutters. The cookie cutters are your surgical instruments to create the crayons new life.
• A storage container. The storage container will become the new home for the crayons new life.

Directions for Making the Homemade Cookie Shape Crayons

All old crayons
Double boiler
Baking pans
Wax paper
Cookie cutters

NOTE: For the crayons that didn't have paper to begin with can be used to create other colors. Put these crayons to the side for later crayon making. If you do not want to create a lot of brown crayons, avoid mixing the following colors combinations if possible:

• Red and green.
• Orange and blue.
• Purple and yellow.

Line the baking pan with wax paper.

NOTE: If you want to make thicker crayons, use smaller baking pans.
You can have your kids help gather the crayons, separate into colors, and peel the paper from the old and broken crayons.

You will want to place water in the lower section of the double boiler, place the top part of the double boiler onto the boiling pan before starting so you don't scald yourself from the steam of the water.

Place the first round of crayons into the upper part of the double boiler. You will melt the crayons over a medium heat.

Pour the melted crayons onto the wax paper lined baking pans.

Let the wax cool, but do not let the wax harden. You can use the fudge soft stage to use a base for how hard the wax mixture should be.

While the crayon wax is soft, press the cookie cutters into the soft melted crayon mixture.

Let the wax cool to the hardened stage. You will want to carefully lift the sheet of crayon wax and gently remove the cookie shaped crayons.

You will repeat the process until all the crayons have been melted, cooled, cut and hardened.

You can place the crayons in storage containers to keep them in one location rather than all over the house.