Rainbow Crayons

James and I were talking about his crayons and he said, "They should make a rainbow crayon." I told him, "My mom made one for me when I was really little, I'm sure we could do it." So I looked online to see what all the possibilities are. I found this website and decided that was what we were looking for.

 

Sorry I didn't take any photos along the way.

We took all the broken crayons we could find. Sorted them by color and unwrapped enough to equal 11 full crayons of each color. Broke the pieces up even more so nothing was over an inch long. Placed the pieces into an old bread pan - Purple First.

Put the bread pan in the oven at 350 degrees. It took 7 minutes to fully melt. Give the melted purple crayons a stir to mix the pigments and wax back together.

I tried putting into the freezer to cool faster but it cracked. So back in the oven, and then this time in the fridge for 5 minutes. Let the melted crayons be just barely warm to the touch. If they are in the fridge too long, let it sit out on the counter to warm up to room temp before adding the next layer of wax. If the wax is too cold, the next layer doesn't stick very well and when you cut apart at the end, the colors come apart.

Next we melted the Blue crayons in another pan in the oven and once melted, stir and pour the melted crayons over the hardened purple. Back in the fridge. Continute on for each color you want to add. Each new layer took longer and longer to cool. By the Orange layer it was in the fridge for about 10 min. Still a tad warm to the touch. As the layers cool, they pull away from the edge of the pan. so new layers of colors seep below. Jut take your knife and scrape the colors off.

Once done, I put in the freezer for 5 minutes to get cold enough that it popped right out of the pan. I let it warm up to room temp. and I placed the block of crayons into the microwave for 30 seconds. Heated my knife up under hot tap water and cut into small rectangles. I ended up with 9 rainbow crayons. The two end ones are a little warped because of the roundness of the pan. But they worked great.