New Crayons: When You Have a Kid That Breaks Them All

I've seen blog posts all over about how to make these. I'll just add mine to the ever growing list! When you have a kid that likes to peel wrappers off of crayons and also likes to break crayons... You end up with a lot of useless crayons!

Step 1: Give kids the project of peeling all the wrappers off of the crayons they broke. Some places said to break them or cut them even more. I'm lazy and they fit, so whatever.

Step 2: Spray cupcake tins, and fill them with broken crayons. Most posts I've seen talk about mixing nice colors together. Well, we had a lot of broken crayons. For the most part, I was able to fill each cup with a single color. I even separated out regular green from blue-green and from yellow-green (or green-yellow... They're basically the same, so they went together.) 

Step 3: This one isn't mentioned on other blogs... It helps with timing if they're all full to close to the same level.

Step 4: Melt in the oven at 275°F. Most places said for 7-8 minutes. I did that... And then added more time. Not all of the crayons I used were Crayola and took longer to melt (some didn't melt at all, but sunk into the melted ones), and the cups that were more full also took longer to melt (see step 3). I think I finally took the fullest tray out after 14 minutes.

Step 5: Take them out of the oven and let them cool on the counter. As they cool and harden, they'll release from the sides (This was the part I was most nervous about! They do actually come out!)

Step 6: Once they're cool, dump them out! Two of mine needed a little whack on the bottom, but still came out just fine. 

Step 7: Wrap up as a gift for someone, because if you're like me, the broken ones have already been replaced with a new set for each kid (thanks Easter Bunny or Santa or Grandma).