2.24.10 - reduce, reuse, recycle

ok, so i am not entirely a "green" girl, but the title just fit. :) and this is going to be a longer post on this blog than usual. it should be a post on my other blog...but i forgot my sd card for my camera today and had to wait till i came back here tonight to take a pic. oh well.

i have wanted to do this for forever! i have seen the idea on so many fun craft websites and when wendy brought home a new valentine's day muffin (?) tin (it's pretty shallow)...i knew exactly what i was going to do with it! we had bunches of little tiny leftover crayon pieces floating around. some i had saved on purpose just to do this some day.

all three kiddos and i turned on some music (a must for craft time at our house!) and peeled the bits of paper off some of the crayons. this was a good "fine motor skills" practice, especially for my toddler. :) he concentrated very hard and got excited every time he completed a crayon. :) next, we broke the crayons into small pieces - an inch or less - and put them in the muffin tin that i had sprayed well with pam. we did some by color shade and for a few we just mixed all the colors together to see what would happen.

then i put them in the oven at 275 for 7 minutes. there was many trips to the oven to turn on the oven light and "check on the crayons" during that seven minute period. :)

after i took them out i set them on the counter to cool. at this point you can take a toothpick and swirl the colors a little bit if you want. ours were pretty well swirled. the website that i found directions on said to freeze them so they could completely set before taking them out. i wasn't sure if that was totally necessary so i waited a few minutes and picked one to try getting out with a knife. it started crumbling.

so then i ran it up to my freezer (the easiest one around here to place something flat in) and waited till later tonight to take them out. i turned the tin over and most of them simply fell out! to get the rest out, i just tapped the tin on the counter a couple times. so, definitely freeze first!!

i think they turned out so cute! my kids haven't seen the final product yet and i know they'll be eager to try them out. i have another idea i found for this...maybe we'll try it next...! :) you can do it just as well in a "regular" muffin tin or a mini muffin tin too. if any of you decide to try this, take a pic and let me see!