For a few weeks now (okay, maybe longer) I've been telling myself I'm going to make some new crayons with all the piles of broken crayon pieces I have laying all over my house. The problem was I didn't have any thing to make them in, so I was stoked when I found some silicone mini muffin pans with a neat leaf design at goodwill for 99 cents for a 3 pack. I brought them home and got to work right away (okay, okay, maybe not right away). Yesterday I told the kids we were going to make some crayons, and they eagerly started ripping the paper off the crayons, but just as quickly got bored and went to play, leaving me tediously unwrapping what seemed like an endless pile of broken crayons. After what felt like hours the crayons were peeled, broken up, and arranged carefully in the baking dishes. Now to melt them.
I turned the oven on the lowest setting at 170 degrees, thinking, hey, they're crayons, it shouldn't take too much heat to melt them. 10 minutes later I take a peek and they're still rock solid, so I turn the heat up to 225, 10 minutes later they're looking a little soft, but not even close to melting, so a crank the oven to 300. 10 minutes later I take a peek.
Oh Shit
You know those leaf shaped silicone mini muffins pans I was talking about...turns out they weren't for muffins. Yep, that's right, they were starting to melt. But the damn crayons were still not melting!
I quickly pulled them out of the oven (thanking my lucky stars I had though to put a solid metal baking tray underneath them at least) and looked at the half melted ice cube trays and the not quite half melted crayons wondering what the heck I should do. I know, put them in a bowl so you can melt the crayons in the microwave, then pour them back into the trays to cool. Genius. After the transfer has been made, not quite completely succesfully, I look at the bowl I just put them in ready to pop it into the microwave.
Oh Shit
It's a metal bowl. Damnit. Scrape Scrape Scrape. Yes, it's clean. Ok, now the crayons are in a microwave safe bowl so I put them in the microwave, I figure a minute should be good to start. 30 seconds later. Beep, Beep, Beep!
What the hell?
It's the smoke detector. There was no smoke, but apparently my smoke detector doesn't think it's a good idea to melt crayons in a microwave. Duly noted. Well, the crayons are mostly melted, So I give them a quick stir and pour them into the shapes to cool. By this point instead of having the fun, rainbow colored crayons I was envisioning, they are very disgusting brownish purple hue.
Those crayons are finally transferred into cookie cutters to cool (did I mention those leaf tray thingy's were metled beyond repair?) But there's still some crayons left, so I figure I'll try again. This time I use some metal cookie cutters. I put them on a piece of parchment paper on a metal cookie tray and fill them up with crayons. I check these after 10 minutes.
Oh shit.
Yes, they are melting, but it's melting underneath the cookie cutters and making one flat crayon. I give up. Oh, and you know that bowl I used to melt the crayons in. This is what it looks like now.
The only question now is do I try to save it, or do I give it up to the craft gods as a sacrifice?
