Crayon Foundry

I was about to open my fist full of broken crayons over the trash when I noticed a big crayon in the shape of a heart. That heart was the first Valentine that my 5-year old son received. It was a bunch of different crayons melted together in the shape of a heart, which gave me the idea to try that with our broken crayons. So those trash bound crayons were given a pardon.

The boys started the tedious work of stripping the crayons of their paper clothes. I was impressed that the boys had the patience to pick off the tiny pieces of paper. They lasted through half of the crayons before I was given the task. I made quick work of it by using a knife to split the paper. 

The boys took the naked crayons and sorted them into colors. Then I tried putting them in a cookie cutter in the oven; however, the melted crayons just leaked out the bottom as I thought they would. I was just going to use cup cake liners, but my husband thought it would be fun to make a silicon mold.   My husband has a pattern making kit, so we made some shapes out of play dough along with actual wrenches and poured the liquid silicon around the shapes. After 3 hours we had a mold to melt the crayons in. 

The boys had a blast breaking the crayons and watching them melt in the oven. After they cooled we popped them out of the mold, but the wrenches kept breaking. They were too thin. We couldn't fit enough crayons into the mold to make the finished product thick enough to keep it from breaking when we took it out. 

My problem solving husband wanted to try, so he proposed using a homemade double boiler to melt the crayons and then pour them into the mold, much like a foundry with metal. We were discussing the procedures, and my 5-year old must have been listening intently because at bed time he told Daddy to wait for him to wake up to make the crayon wrenches. 

The whole family really got involved to make this project a success. Really, my husband made this one happen, mainly because he engineered the shit out of it. He would probably shrug his shoulders, put on his half smile, and say he was just helping. He just helps a lot, so thank you husband. 

As I look at this post I realize we did a lot to recycle crayons, but it was awesome to take the boys through the whole thing. I mean what kid has a crayon foundry?