Crafty Blogs

Wednesday 17 March 2010

Crayon Cookies


Following on from my last post on wax crayons, I thought I would introduce this project for Crayon Cookies which uses up all those odd bits and pieces of broken crayons that you always end up with.

Method
Remove all the paper from the crayons - I found this was easier if they were soaked in water for a few minutes first.

Using an old muffin tray, divide up the crayons between the different sections.  The advice is to use an old muffin tin, but I thought I could get round this by using muffin cases - wrong!  The wax still got onto the tin, but it did clean up quite easily with soap and really hot water.  You can have great fun at this stage, the kids can get involved, and you can divide the colours out however you like.  I decided to stick to colour families, so I used shades of green in one, shades of blue in another, pinks and purples in a third, and so on. The kids did a couple of 'harlequin' cookies, with a complete mixture of colours.


Place the tin in a warm oven which has been pre-heated to 150 degrees.  As soon as the tin goes in, turn the oven off, and leave the crayons to slowly melt.  It's quite difficult to judge this stage - at the end of the period, not all of my crayons had melted, so I turned the oven on again at a low heat and left it a little longer.  However this resulted in them becoming a little too liquid! Possibly it depends on the performance of your oven.

When they have melted sufficiently for the individual crayons to have 'merged' but with the individual colours remaining distinct, carefully remove the tin from the oven and allow to cool.

I made my crayon cookies standard muffin size, which meant they were quite chunky for little hands to hold as crayons, and I had to cut them into quarters (this does have the advantage that it gives you a good point to use).  If you want to cut them, I found that the easiest way to do it was to heat a good strong cutting knife over the gas flame, and use the hot knife to cut the cookie.  Alternatively you could bake them as mini-muffins if you have the appropriate tin, though I think this would restrict you to only using the thinner crayons.


I can't remember where I came across the idea originally - it was in pre-blogging days, and I didn't take a note of it at the time, but in looking for some detailed insturctions I found this post by Ten Ten  helpful.

Another tutorial by Chica and Jo, uses ice-cube trays with completely melted crayons in individual colours to create a more sophisticated crayon with layers of colour.  They look wonderful, but I decided I didn't have the patience for this.   You can find it here.

8 comments:

  1. We did this last year http://themadhouse-themadhouse.blogspot.com/2009/07/recycling-broken-crayons.html. I used silicon moulds, which were 99p and they were fab. They make cool crayons for little hands

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for adding the link - that was also in my pre-blogging days. It's a different approach again to use actual moulds, and stick to one colour. The fruit ones especially I think are quite effective, and very shiny too!
    (Good point about them not rolling off the table.)

    ReplyDelete
  3. These look good enough to eat!

    On another note entirely, I was wondering if you were going to do anything on Fimo. Did you use to shrink crisp packets in the oven and make badges?

    My 2 year old has started calling Playdough 'Later'. I think I need to play it with her more. Guilt trip!

    ReplyDelete
  4. @deer baby - I have to say I think their decorative value is almost greater than their intended purpose!

    Not sure about Fimo - I'm concentrating more on art than craft here - I've been playing around with it recently though for my own entertainment.

    I have never heard about the shrinking crisp packets technique, and am totally intrigued. I obviously missed out here - do tell me more!

    Love the 'new name' for Playdough - hilarious.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I forgot all about this - we did this last year and the results were brilliant - I might have another go later on - I think we bought some sillicone cake cases to make ours with so I might hunt them out.

    Thanks for reminding me
    x

    ReplyDelete
  6. It seems that silicone cases are the way to go - must try them myself next time.

    ReplyDelete
  7. We just use to put crisp packets in the oven for a few minutes and hey presto - they shrank to tiny size. They were hard like enamel. And then we would attach a badge pin to the back. It was quite an industry at my school. I think maybe the crisp packet formula has changed. My dad was (before he retired) an industrial chemist so he knew about these things.

    Sorry - nothing to do with art!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Perhaps that's where the idea for Shrinkies came from. I don't suppose it would work with crisp packets now though.

    ReplyDelete