For Valentine’s Day, Devona made heart-shaped crayons with a candy mold, double broiler, and broken crayons. It inspired me to make the crayons with different colored chunks in them. (Those were always my favorite as a kid.) I made lots of mistakes & even ended up with ugly brown when everything melts together, but now I have lots of tips to share with you!
Supplies: double broiler (I used a pan & glass jar, but a tin can would be great as well), water for the double broiler, a mold for the crayons (I used a brownie pan with dividers, but you can use candy molds, soap molds, candle molds, or other make-shift molds), broken crayons, knife, cutting board, & a stove top. Other useful optional items: towel (for drying the glass jar), spoon or popsicle stick (for mixing wax), and oven mitt.
Instructions:
1. Begin heating water in the double broiler. You’ll want to melt the wax at the lowest temperature that it’ll melt, so it’s best to start with lower heat & increase it slowly as necessary (if it gets too hot it may melt your colored wax into a pool of ugly brown!). For my stove, I turned the knob up to 3. Choose a crayon color to use as the most prominent color. I chose blue because I had the most blue crayons. Place this color in the glass jar double broiler so it can begin melting.
2. Cut the remaining crayons with a knife on the cutting board. Chop some of the crayons small & medium sized and the rest very fine.
3. Now you’ll begin placing crayon wax in the mold. First, put in some fine pieces. When your wax in the double broiler is melted, remove it from the pan (with an oven mitt if necessary) and dry off the outside of the container with a towel (you don’t want water drops getting into your crayon mold). Pour a layer of melted wax over the finely chopped wax pieces, then continue alternating with the chopped & fine waxes and melted wax. Finish by putting in some fine pieces and gently pressing them into the previous layer of melted wax.
4. When the wax has cooled, remove it from the mold. This can usually be done by turning the mold upside down and gently tapping it. Sometimes a minute in the freezer will help if it’s really stuck.
5. Now for a few finishing touches. Gently brush off any loose pieces of crayon that didn’t melt into the wax (you don’t want them tracking through the house!) I cut my rectangle in 2 to make two smaller crayons. It was very easy to cut with my knife. And finally, an optional step, color all over a sheet of paper to make all the edges nice & consistent. I did this because my cut line looked a little different than my original molded sides.
Awesome! I think my kids would love this.
These are so pretty! Love them! What about the clean up part? How did you get the wax out of your jar and off your knife? I always find crayon messes are hard to clean up!
As far as clean-up: the knife is not a problem at all. I was just cutting hardened wax instead of melted wax. Most of the wax wipes away with a cloth. I suppose a serrated knife would be more difficult to clean, but I think a quick soak in boiling water would do the trick.
As for the glass, use the double broiler to melt the wax, pour out what you can, and use a rag or paper towels to remove the rest. You may repeat this process a couple times. I had no intentions of using the glass for food purposes again though. But it came clean enough for continued craft use.
I did this one time but all I did was put crayons in a muffin tin and bake them at 200 degrees for like 20 minutes (you have to watch it).
They are fun. Yours look really pretty.