Caution: Hot (Purple) Wax

On Friday, Amelia took a super long nap.  Jason and I had already decided we were going to eat dinner out on the way to a birthday party, which left lots of time (way too much, perhaps) for me to try a crafty project.

I found this idea HERE and thought these shape crayons might make a good stocking stuffer for Amelia.  Plus I like the whole reduce, reuse, recycle aspect.  We haven't accumulated a huge stash of broken crayons just yet, so I raided my childhood crayon box last week that my mom keeps at her house.  I scored some candy molds at Michael's for 40% off ($1.20 before tax), so I was on my way....or so I thought.

I broke up the broken crayons into smaller pieces, putting about 3-4 crayons in each muffin tin.  I decided on 6 colors because I wanted to make the race car shaped ones really bad thinking they would be the perfect shape to color with and there were 6 cars in the mold.

I popped the tray into the oven and the crayons were melted in no time.  Things were going good! 

I put the mold on a cooling rack and attempted to pour the hot purple wax into it.  Well, because the mold was really for making fancy candy pretzels, some of the wax poured out of the end where they was a opening for the pretzel to slide in.  I was a little nervous when some of it landed on my beige countertop that shows EVERYTHING.  So, I reached for a paper towel and slid the cooling rack over a bit.  I got most of the wax up, but needed to move the rack just a little more to get the rest.  Apparently, I moved it too much and next thing I knew the rack, mold, and all of the hot purple wax were everywhere.  

So, the next 30 minutes were spent cleaning up the wax off of everything with the help of my iron and a half a roll of paper towels.  It was such a mess since the wax dried instantly and stuck securely to whatever it landed on.

Disgusted with myself, but too proud to ditch the project altogether, I decided to give it another go following my clean up efforts.  This time, I used the transportation mold I bought and things went much smoother.  The hot wax went right in, the crayons cooled and hardened, and then when they were ready, I popped them right out.

They turned out pretty good.  I would probably try to add another broken crayon or two next time to make the molds a little fuller.  If I am in a brave kind of mood, I might attempt this project again--assuming I can track down some more broken crayons somewhere....