Thursday, December 15, 2011

How To: Recycled Crayon Wax Christmas Ornaments

Purple-Tart-Ornament

You know all those cheap wax crayons you get at restaurants? Or in bags o crayons at thrift shops and yard sales? Well, they do not make good cupcake crayons. They don't, I have even mixed them with Crayolas. The thing is the cheap wax is light and floats to the top o the crayon instead of mixing with the good wax. So, what do you do with all your child's broken crayons and cheap crayons? Well, you can make candles. But it takes a lot o crayons to make candles. (And I cannot attest to the safety o crayon candles.) So what else? Well you can make Christmas tree ornaments. It is super simple! Wednesday was able to help with most of the process. he liked sorting and breaking the crayons. (I  asked her to pick out all the pink, green, red and white ones.)

Gather Ye Materials
Broken crayons
Glitter (I used fine, medium and chunky)
Screw Eyes
Ribbon
Cupcake molds The smaller hearts are Wilton Mini Scalloped Silicone Cupcake Hearts and the bigger hearts are dollarstore valentine molds. (Super flimsy)

Begin at the beginning...


Wax-Tart-Ornament-Mosaic

You are essentially making crayon cakes with LOTS o sparkles....

Step 1: Remove wrappers from crayons and break crayons into small pieces.

Step 2:  Sprinkle glitter in the bottom of the molds/tins. (Little or lots, it is totally up to you)
Step 3: Line a baking sheet with tin-foil or parchment paper and set molds on top. Fill each mold with crayon pieces.You can make these monochromatic, keep it Christmas-sy or just go-to-town with the rainbow.

Step 4: Put baking pans/cups in an oven pre-heated to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
Step 5: Leave in for ten(ish) minutes, you want the crayons to be melted leaving a smooth surface but not boiling.
Step 6: Remove from oven and sprinkle with more glitter. (Don't go crazy, most of it sinks to the middle of the wax cake anyways.)
Step 7: Let cool. (This really doesn't take as long as you'd think) and remove from molds.

Step 8: Carefully attach screw eye to wax tart.
Step 8.5: I found pre-poking a hole with a tooth pick helped.
Step 8.75: I also found that if I broke some it was no biggie, I just pooped the broken ones back in the oven or a couple minutes and we were golden.
Step 8.9: I also found that if the screw eye fell out, I just heated it up for a second with a lighter and it glued itself to the whole, better than before.
Step 9: Add ribbon and voila! You're done!

P.S. I you need pictures of a crayon cake tutorial this one from Indietutes is super!

Crayon Wax tart Ornament Collage
Happy Christmas Crafting!