Thursday I was feeling crafty and decided we’d try a project I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while - melting old crayons to make new multi-colored ones. A few weeks ago I picked up a heart-shaped-ice-cubes tray at goodwill with this project in mind and it motivated me to round up the rest of the supplies. We had lots of crayons that were broken and peeled already, so it was just a matter of sorting them into colors combinations we liked and breaking them to make them even smaller. We started out chopping with knives - not sharp ones - but that got old fast and we moved on to ziplock bags that we hit with hammers-much faster and better results.
We filled the heart shaped cubes and still had leftover chunks, so I got out an old popsicle mold and a regular ice cube tray too.
It was a really hot day and I read on the crayola website that crayons start melting at 105 degrees so we rigged up something else I’ve been meaning to try - a rough solar oven.
We just lined a cardboard box with tin foil, put an old storm window over it, and turned it to face the sun. (Here it is with nothing in it.) As rudimentary as this was, it quickly got up to about 125/130 degrees - and that is according to the only thermometer we had, a candy thermometer - but I think that was about right.
Waiting for the wax to cool again was the hardest part of this project. Here are the creators with their finished products-
And a closeup of the goods-
Hazel put yellow hair bands on all of her favorites.
This is sooo cool! I’ve been wanting to do a simple solar oven as well. Thanks for once again paving the way.