Earlier this week, Roy was doing a bit of a clean up. He had craft supplies all over the place, and I suggested we needed to sort out what we had and throw or give away the things we didn't need or couldn't use. We found a huge container of crayons, but there were a lot of broken ones, which are more difficult to use. Roy didn't want to throw them away, but since he also had lots of whole ones, he didn't know what to do with them. His Grandma told him she had read that you could melt crayons in the oven to make new, crazy crayons and Roy thought this sounded like fun. We had to try lots of different combinations, and made lots of icky brown crayons before we succeeded, but what we created in the end was awesome. So this week, Roy Creates Crazy UFO Crayons.
You Will Need:
- Broken crayons. You can use any colour crayons you like, but make sure that when you are melting them together you use colours which won't mix into an icky colour.
- Vegetable oil
- Some old frittata trays. You can use other types of trays to make your crayons, and can even make them in patty cake pans with the paper wrappers around them, but the curved shape of frittata tins made really cool UFO crayons.
- An old plate and knife. Don't use Mum's best china!
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 110 degrees celcius. Don't be tempted to use a higher temperature - you'll probably mess up because they will melt too fast.
- Take the papers off the crayons (if there are papers on the outside of them) and cut them into small chunks (about 1 centimetre long)
- Use your finger to rub a little oil around the inside of the frittata trays. You want to cover the entire surface with oil.
- Now, fill the trays with crayon bits. Make sure you mix colours which will blend well - blue and yellow will give you a bit of green where they melt together, red and yellow will give you a bit of orange etc but green and orange will make an icky brown. Don't mix too many colours either, or you will have a sludgy looking crayon.
- Put your crayons into the oven and WATCH THEM. Some crayons might melt very quickly, others might take a long time. Roys took about 5 minutes. You want the wax to melt into a puddle but you don't want it to melt so much that the colours mix together.
- Carefully take your crayons out of the oven and put them on a cooling rack. Don't shake them around or the colours will mix. If there are a few bits of solid crayon, use a toothpick to poke them into the melted wax.
- When the crayons have solidified, but are still warm, you can put them in the fridge to cool and set. Otherwise, just leave them on the bench and wait.
- When the crayons are cold and set, gently bang the tray on the bench so that the crayons fall out. You might need to gently press on the side of some of them to encourage them to come out.
- Now, enjoy drawing with your crazy coloured, UFO crayons.