When Your Kids Hand You Broken Crayons, Make Awesome Ones

Crayons break, that's just a sad fact of life. And when they are just little nubs they are very hard to color with. But instead of throwing them away I decided to melt them down and make new ones.

Here's how to be the coolest dad/mom on the block:

1) take a bunch of broken crayons

of the same color, or you can use different colors if you want to bring the funk to your kids' drawings

2) cut them into little tiny pieces

You can use a regular kitchen knife, the crayons bits will wash right out

3) Put the little bits in cans

I used soda cans, but tin cans from vegetables or soup work much better because you can see and stir your mixture to make sure it's liquid and uniform throughout

4) Melt them in the oven, depending on how many crayons you have this could take 15 minutes, or 30. You'll want to check and stir. I used 225 degrees, I'm sure you could go a little hotter, but 225 seemed right.

5) Pour them into molds. I used cheap plastic candy molds, because they are cheap. Let them harden for 15 minutes, less if you put them in the fridge. Julian did not have patience for this step and got covered in orange goo.

The other school of thought here is to go with silicone molds, so you don't have to pour the crayons (you do lose some in the transfer process), they'll melt in the shape you want them, but silicone molds that could withstand the temperatures of the oven were too expensive for this project.

We did some awesome Halloween shapes.

Note: the little stick on the bottom of my fingers is for where you would put the stick if you were making a lollipop. Some extra melted crayon oozed into that canyon. I wanted to break them off but the kids insisted I keep them and they actually made good points for coloring.

They color just like regular crayons.

The long, skinny shapes are the best, but they do tend to break. But when they do, you can just cut them up and make more crayons.