If you’ve got some old broken crayons laying around, it’s easy to make these recycled rainbow crayons!
These fun rainbow crayons make a great birthday party favour, or a fun craft activity, or just a super cool way to recycled broken crayons into rainbow crayons that are lots of fun to draw with!
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Turning old broken crayons into gorgeous rainbow crayons is a super fun activity to try with your kids.
We made these gorgeous heart shaped rainbow crayons for our twins rainbow themed birthday party. They made great party favours and cost us next to nothing to make.
Rainbow crayons are also lots of fun to draw with as you never know quite what colour will go on to the paper next!
Start collecting up your old crayons and when you have enough you can turn them into rainbow crayons!
How to Make Recycled Rainbow Crayons
All you need to make your own set of recycled crayons you’ll need a bunch of old crayons, and a silicone baking mold.
We used a silicone, heart shaped baking mold, but you could use any silicone molds you like. Be aware that the larger, cupcake sized molds will take a lot of crayons to fill them, so you might prefer to look for silicone chocolate molds instead.
You can find silicone baking molds in all kinds of cool shapes, here are a few more of our favourites designs, just click on the image for more information or to buy them:
The first step to making recycled rainbow crayons is to remove the paper from all your old crayons. This is a great fine motor activity for little hands to help with!
As you are taking the paper off the crayons you might like to sort the crayons into rainbow colours if you want to make rainbow crayons like ours that have each colour of the rainbow in them. Of course you can make any colour combinations you like, or just add a random mix of each colour too.
Place the silicone mold onto a baking sheet and fill each shape with your old crayons. It doesn’t matter if the crayons or are broken just add pieces into the mold in whatever design you like.
Place the mold filled with old crayons into a low oven (we set our oven at 130 C) for about 30 minutes or until all the crayons have melted. Check often, during the process, and be aware that smaller molds filled with less crayons will melt faster.
Allow the crayons to cool and harden completely before you pop out your beautiful recycled rainbow crayons!
We used a variety of different branded and quality crayons and we discovered that the lower quality crayons can have an issue with the wax separating from the coloured pigment. This can leave a clear wax layer on one side of the crayons, but that is easily scraped off with butter knife.
Of course the better quality of crayons you start with, the better quality you will end up with!
How to Make Recycled Rainbow Crayons.
If you’ve got some old broken crayons laying around, it’s easy to make these recycled rainbow crayons!
Materials
- Old crayons with the paper removed
- Silicone baking mold
- Baking tray
Tools
- Oven
Instructions
- Remove all the paper from old crayons so they are ready to be recycled.
- Sort the old crayons into rainbow colours if you wish
- place the silicone baking mold on a baking tray
- Preheat your oven to 130 C
- Place pieces of old crayons into the silicone mold.
- Place the crayon filled mold into the oven for 30 minutes, or until the crayons have all melted.
- Allow each crayon to cool completely before popping them out.
Notes
If you are left with a clear wax layer on the bottom of your crayons, scrape it off with a butter knife.
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Marita says
Visited Ebay but there does not seem to be any oven moulds for Lego :( Lots of icecube trays but they are not oven proof.
G.Arm says
I made LEGO crayons! Mine are Eco-Friendly ?! I normally prepare pieces and in the hot summer days, I put them in the molds in plastic bags and on old cookie sheet in the sun!! No need for oven!??Lots of planning, but LOTS of fun for kiddos!
katepickle says
That’s a great idea!
Marita says
They look awesome.
Trish says
I have a saved bundle of broken crayons but haven’t tried to re purpose them yet.
Great idea.
Aussie Mum says
I have tried this before in muffin tins but the hear-shapes look so much cuter!
Kathy says
One of my 5 year old’s friends’ Mums showed me this trick a while back and I’ve been saving up my stubby crayons to do it as a holiday activity with the kids! They look fantastic ;-)
Julie says
I saw Karen Pang do this on Playschool a while ago (she made star-shaped crayons). She did hers in the microwave, but didn’t really give much detail -went straight from putting old crayon pieces in the tin to “here’s one we prepared earlier”. Now I don’t have to research it myself – thanks!
Lori @ RRSAHM says
That is so cool, I’ve never seen this before!!
Susan @ Reading Upside Down says
I have a bag of old crayons that I have been keeping, planning to google some info on what I can do with them.
I’m all inspired to try this now with my children over the Christmas holidays. Thanks for the links & inspiration.
Marita says
I’m going to try making them in the microwave. Having the oven on in this heat does not appeal. My girls want to make them for Christmas gifts much cheaper than buying Lego moulds for the party.
Thankyou for this great inspiration Kate.
keepcatebusy (Cate) says
I just made about a million of these for our school fete – hearts and stars. They’re so easy and effective…although, I must say yours are much prettier than mine!
Fiona says
Looks pretty good!
Claireyh says
I think I can do this, make something new and clean up at the same time.
JDaniel4's Mom says
They are so pretty. What a fun thing to color with!
amandab says
I’ve often seen this too and would love to try it, but all our broken bits of crayons seem to disappear, only to be found months later down the back of couches and chairs *sigh*
E. says
They look so great. I bet the party people loved them.
disydoit says
they look awesome, I like the easy way. What a great accessory to your rainbow party!
Kelly Be A Fun Mum says
WOW! Absolutely fantastic! They look great!
Alissa says
I did the layering version for Hannahs rainbow party and while it was time
Consuming, it wasn’t hard. And the end result was so cool! I wanted to write in rainbows all week lol!
Christie - Childhood 101 says
They look awesome and I love the rainbow style.
Marie says
Love these hearts. So fun.