Recycled Crayons: Gifts Kids Can Make

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Well, we are rapidly approaching those “last few days” to Christmas and are finishing off most of our Christmas Crafts for Kids, as well as Kids Christmas Cards. Both children said they wanted to make a gift for their friends.. so… on for some cute Star Crafts for Kids – these are also a fanastic use for broken crayon pieces. A wonderful way to upcycle crayons and avoid landfill!

Recycled Crayons Gift for Kids

FINALLY (it only took me about 3 years to do so), we made recycled star crayons! We have a hole tub worth of crayons and the kids don’t really use them anymore, so it was a good opportunity to “recycle” and make upcycled crayons stars!

Recycle Crayons Materials:

  • Old crayons – we actually had enough to make our stars in just yellow, but you can of course mix and match colours. Be mindful of colour theory and also that you may end up with brown sludge if you stir them too much
  • A heat proof silicon mold (in our case star shaped)
  • Knife for cutting & oven for heating

How to make Recycled Crayons from old Broken Crayons:

Let’s start with top tips – 

* Take care when “mixing colours”, crayons are not made from “pure colours” (i.e. red is not JUST red), so normal colour theory does not a apply (a blue and a yellow, may result in a brownish green)

* Personally, I would say, stick to pure colours (e.g. just yellow) or “adjacent colours” – e.g. red and orange, orange and yellow, yellow and green, green and blue etc – the crayon is likely to mix a little

* Crayons are made from different materials – some will melt better than others. You will also find, that some crayons will “separate out” into different layers that they are made up of – the lower you heat them, the less this will happen. So it is worth taking your crayons out AS SOON as they have melted (ours were even still a bit lumpy). I then like to give them a good stir at the end, to get any separated layers “back together again” and the resulting crayon working better. That is why not mixing too many colours is best!

* To clean your silicon tray – I found dish soap with boiling water good and then wiping it immediately with some paper Kitchen Towels. Repeat 2-3 times.

Recycled Crayons Gift

1) Strip your crayons of all paper – we found “peeling” them like a carrot with a knife worked best. If your crayon is VERY DIRTY looking, I recommend taking that top dirty layer off too – you don’t want the dirty inside your brand new crayon!

Recycled Crayons

2) Fill your silicon trays – try and pack them as best as possible.

3) Place in the oven and heat to 100C. Keep checking. Once you can see they have all melted remove the silicon tray and let cool.

4) At this point I like to give them a quick stir with a toothpick. If you have mixed colours, don’t be too vigorous at this point.

Recycled Crayons Stars Gift

5) Once fully cooled turn out! And ta da!!

Check out the rest of our fantastic Star Crafts for Kids:

DIY Star Craft Ideas for all seasons

Or take a peak and be inspired by our extensive collection of Christmas Crafts for kids here:

Christmas Crafys for kids

More great and unexpected uses for broken crayons:

recycle broken crayons