One Sunny Acre: Recycled Crayons, with Glitter!

This is a little off topic from what I usually blog about, but we were so tickled with the results of this little project that I just had to pass it on. I know many of you have young children in the home or grandchildren who will love this idea. It made for a great rainy day project!

All moms know how crayons tend to multiply and turn up in the darnedest places (like in the dryer--with a full load of whites!) While most young children seem to take immense pleasure from breaking their crayons to bits and peeling off the papers, seldom do they want to color with them again afterward.

I've been finding little bits of crayons under the table, in the cracks of the recliner, inside of random drawers, here and there. Usually I just toss them in the trash. They'll never find their way back to the crayon box again anyway. Then this morning, I saw the directions for recycled crayons on a blog...someplace! I went back later and couldn't remember where I found it. (If it was your blog, let me know and I'll link back to you!)

This is so easy and so ingenious. My nearly-four-year-old daughter even enjoyed the task of removing the paper peels. She really had fun sorting them by color group. Then sorting them into the mini-muffin pan was the best part.

Pick an old muffin pan if you can, large or mini, because you might end up with crayon residue on it and it will have to be dedicated to crafts after that. Lining the holes with cupcake liners would work too and probably preserve your pan, especially if you don't fill them too full. You'll need to spray the holes with a vegetable oil spray before proceeding.

Take your crayons and break them into smaller bits and sort them into the holes in eye-pleasing color combinations. You really can't go too wrong with this. Pink and brown made a nice combination. Black, grey and white went well together. I really loved all the blues and greens together too.

Now here is the fun part. This I came up with myself. I took body glitter; the very fine, powdery kind you can use on your face and sprinkled it liberally over the crayons after they were sorted into the muffin holes. I'd say I dumped in maybe 1/4th a teaspoon of glitter into each hole. Give the pan a good tap and a shake to distribute the glitter.

We used Wet N' Wild Mega Sparkle body glitter.

Sprinkle generously for lots of bling!

Place the pan into your oven, preheated to 275 degrees and give the crayons about 10 minutes to melt. Carefully pull it out and set it in a safe place. There'll be no mercy if you splash it onto your carpet or someplace else you don't want it, that's for sure.

If you like, you can take a toothpick or wooden skewer and give it a little swirl while it's still liquid. Don't get too carried away or you'll loose all the neat swirls.

They don't take very long to set. Maybe 15 minutes tops. I put mine into the fridge after they cooled a little to speed the process. We were very excited to get to coloring with them.

Once they were set, they popped out of the muffin pan very easily!

We spent well over an hour or two coloring with them and once Ava was done with that, she also enjoyed stacking them into castles for awhile.

They color really well and you never know what color you'll get as you go. The glitter adheres to the paper nicely.

I think these would make wonderful party favors for a child's birthday party. I have some silicone fossil molds here somewhere and I think I might make some up as freebies for my summer Creation Club kids. These will also be nice to carry a couple in my purse for a handy distraction when needed. No more fuzzy, broken crayons lost at the bottom of my purse. These are too big to lose!