Melting down crayons!

I have been sick of broken crayons for awhile now. Every time the girls sit down to color crayons get broken. I decided I would melt them down and had seen more than a couple blog where people poured them into silicone ice cube trays. I wish I could have found a triangle shaped tray but I wasn't able to .

Here are our colors separated. As I melted them I separated them more making light and dark blue, green, and purple and also making pink and red. Katie and I broke the crayons into small pieces to get them ready for melting.

I used tin cans I had cleaned out. Four of them fit in the pan I used, also they kept each other from tipping over. Then I added water to the pan to make a double boiler type thing. Here the water is boiling but it didn't need to be that hot.

Here are my trays filled for the first time. Some aren't filled all the way because they are waiting for a second color to make layered crayons. Melting more crayons. Before picture

After picture. It didn't take very long for them to melt.

And here is the result. I did lots of layered crayons as well as many solid colors.

If I had a ton of a color or ran out of space in my trays I poured the melted crayon into a paper cup and ended up with four crayon pucks.

Lots and lots of crayons. The pink crayons have some gray/silver residue but I wasn't about to put the elbow grease into cleaning out the trays between pourings.

The girls colored with them as soon as they were dried and cool.If you do this I wouldn't use the trays for anything else because it leaves a residue that would take more work than I'm willing to do to clean them out. This was fun to do and Katie was able to help break crayons at the beginning and pop out crayons at the end. The girls love their "new" crayons.