I'd like to feature some holiday gift ideas and crafts on the blog this month. Here's the first one to get you started!
Our elementary school has a craft bazaar the first week in December. The crafts for sale are supposed to be entirely "kid made." Through the fall kids earn "bucks" in class for good behavior, doing chores, helping the teacher, being polite, taking initiative, etc. The kids love having their own "money" to shop for presents for their siblings and family.
Seeking to do something low cost that would still be a good seller (vs the toilet-paper roll puppets and pipecleaner creatures we see every year), we decided to do recycled crayons. They are a practical, fun gift that kids can give to other kids in their family, cousins, and friends. We're selling each crayon individually, so kids can create their own sets, based on the colors they like.
Using crayon stubs that we had lying around the house, and broken and discarded crayons donated to us from several teachers at the school, we set to work peeling, breaking, and placing them in a silicone candy mold that I picked up in the baking aisle at the local craft store (using a coupon, it cost less than $5.00).
To make multi-color crayons, the trick is to heat the oven to 200F, place the mold on a rigid cookie sheet in the oven, and then watch carefully. As soon as the crayons soften, gently remove the sheet from the oven and let set. Leave it in too long and the colors will liquify and mix, turning every crayon a solid grayish brown. Sometimes the crayons on the outer edges will melt first, so I take the tray out and let it completely cool, pop out the crayons which are done, and then put the tray back in the oven with only the center crayons left to melt just a bit more.
We've made DOZENS of batches of these through the years. Things we've learned are:
> Use only one brand of crayon. Crayola tends to work best. Some cheaper brands are a lot more waxy and melt unevenly, with the color separating from the wax.
> It's good to mix really light colors with really dark colors for contrast.
> Don't mix "washable" crayons with regular wax crayons. They don't melt together well.
> When mailing, stack them and wrap well with bubble wrap. They do break if dropped just so.
> For gifting, we give a set of 6 to 10 colors along with a pad of heavy white paper or a bound sketch book.
It's great! I will try it!
Posted by: Erdohati Orsolya | Thursday, April 05, 2012 at 01:31 PM