Friday, December 24, 2010

What Can We Do with Broken Crayons?

by Lois Breneman, © 2009, Heart to Heart

A subscriber asked me this question, so I thought maybe some other moms could have been wondering the same thing!

When our children were small, we took the paper off the tiny pieces of crayon and filled small glass cylinders with them, put them on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper, and melted them in the oven.  We froze them and they popped right out.  The kids used them as fat crayons of all colors to color pictures.  I really don't know where those glass cylinders came from, but I suppose even a custard cup could be used to make a really fat crayon.

Another thing we did with broken crayons was to shave them onto wax paper in a design, cover with another piece of wax paper and iron them.  They made pretty designs!  I'd advise using an old towel on the ironing board, and a press cloth on top of the art work to save the ironing board cover and the iron plate from a colorful mess.  The small crayons could also be hammered between plastic wrap.  All shades of blues would be pretty, with touches of yellow and orange, etc.

We've also used small pieces of crayons to color paraffin when making cake candles or dipping pine cones.

Small crayons can still be used for coloring, using the sides rather than the tips. 

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