3.02.2008

Project: Recycled Crayons Round 2

After a trip to the Dollar Tree for some supplies I decided to revisit the recycled crayon project. I bought two muffin tins and some heart and star shaped baking cups and did a little more research and this is what I've found out...150 is what most people recommend (even Martha Stewart) setting the oven on and that is should take approximately 20-30 minutes for them to melt and this is what I tried. My ovens lowest temperature is 170, but I was not worried about this, after all I know that I can cook them at at least 250 and they won't burst into flames. It did take longer than 30 minutes, but I was opening the oven every five minutes to peek and take pictures.Here they are in the oven, this is after about 35 minutes, getting runny, but still lumpy on the back. You might notice that the ones on the left are in coordinating colors and the ones on the right are just random colors thrown together, they both turned out great. Fresh from the oven and cooling on the stove.Here is the back of the mixed crayons, not that pretty, but the other side looks great.Here are the finished crayons, aren't they pretty? Here's a better detail of the shapes and by the way the crayons in the cupcake tins melted faster.And here are the ones from the muffin tins, the color variations are really noticeable.
Some alternative instructions I found said to preheat the oven to 350 and when you put the crayons in turn the oven off and leave them for about 15-20 minutes, I may try this next time. It has also been mentioned that using silicone bake ware makes it easier to remove the finished crayons and there are also a bigger variety of shapes available. I put mine in the freezer for a few minutes and they popped right out. I also wanted to mention that I chopped these up with a knife into pea sized pieces, the last time I made the chunks smaller and this is not necessary. This is a really fun and inexpensive project (I only spent $5.00 for the tins) I would definitely recommend trying it!

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