Crayon Hearts

These would be cute for Valentine’s Day however I think girls always like hearts so I’m not waiting!  I used a heart shaped silicone muffin pan I have, but you can do these in any shape –in fact I also did some regular round ones and some in cupcake papers too.

The ingredients are really basic:

• crayons (good way to recycle used broken ones)
• cooking spray
• muffin pan (heart shape)
• other muffin pan if you want to make more shapes and cupcake papers if you want to do some of those

I thought I had a box of old crayons (yes, my sons are now in their thirties and somewhere around here I recently STILL had a box of old crayons).  I couldn’t find them, so it’s possible I finally got rid of them in the past year or so, or they may be tucked away somewhere and will reappear.  But, at any rate, I went out and bought two of the large (64 count) size boxes of Crayola Crayons.  I figured that way I would have plenty of the colors I wanted, because I wanted lots of reds and pinks and girly colors for hearts anyway.

Now, if you have to start with brand new crayons the worst part of this project begins.  Peeling the paper off.  I found the easiest way to get it off is to take something sharp and score it carefully lengthwise. Be careful.  I also found that some of the paper will just pop right off and some of it will stick.  On the ones that are sticky, wipe them with a paper towel afterwards and whatever is still sticking will wipe off.  I figured that if you left paper on them it might be a problem later, but I’m not sure.

I wanted the hearts to be in shades of mostly red/orange/pink/yellow with a little bit of blue thrown in.  First spray your muffin pan with cooking spray.  Hopefully this does help with sticking. Then I broke the crayons up into 3 or 4 pieces each (if yours are already broken up, just deal with what you have).  Then I put them into the hearts as evenly as I could, making sure I didn’t have too much of one color in any one heart.

I filled them about halfway full.  I didn’t want the finished crayons to be too thick and bulky, plus I wasn’t really sure how long they would take to set, and if they were too thick I thought it might take much longer or make them sag in the center.

While I was doing all of this, I was letting the oven preheat to 300 degrees.

I let them *cook* about ten minutes, and they were nice and liquid at that point.  Now, be very careful getting them out.  In fact, I suggest you put your silicone muffin pan on a cookie sheet, since they can tend to fold up and spill.  I think hot molten crayons could give you a nasty burn.

Once they are melted, take them out and let them cool.  I had read somewhere that it’s a fun idea to take a toothpick and whirl around the color to make a swirly design.  So I did that and it’s nice to get the color moved around like that.  However, it only does it on one side.  But that’s ok.  It’s actually interesting to have 2 different looking sides.

Let it cool for awhile (it doesn’t take all that long –maybe 20 minutes) before you pop them out.  But REALLY do let them cool.  If you try to pop them out too soon they tend to bend or break or stick or crumble, none of which ruin them for coloring, but they aren’t nearly as pretty.

Once they are cooled and you pop them out, they are AWESOME!  I was really jazzed.  So jazzed in fact I decided to make some more, but I thought, what would boys like?

I didn’t have any other cool muffin pan shapes, so I made some round ones in more boy kind of colors.  I went a little crazy with the swirly on these, but I liked the colors.  I also tried to take them out of the pan a little sooner, and you can see that the edges on one are a little broken.  I ended up recycling that one for the next batch anyway, since this was all experimental.

You can see how different each side looks.   These two photos are the same crayons, just flip side.  As I said, I think it’s fun.  Of course, when coloring, you will get what you will get, so some kids may not think it’s that funny!  I think you will probably want a box of nice regular crayons on hand.   But these are for those creative, abstract days.   🙂

Lastly I decided to try them in cupcake papers.  Somewhere I read that someone did that, so I thought I would try it.  I did everything the same except I didn’t spray the papers with cooking spray. When I pulled them out of the oven they really looked like they were going to be a mess and not come off the paper. I figured I had wasted that batch. however, not so!  They were a little brittle on the edges, but they were fine. And I thought they looked pretty cool. Like little crayon tarts!

One last thing.  Cleaning my silicone muffin pans.  I did use my GOOD ones.  The crayon left a ring of color around the inside, of course.  It didn’t seem to want to wash or wipe off.  So, I filled them with water and put them in the microwave long enough to get the water to just barely boiling.  Then I poured the water out and immediately wiped the color right out.  After that I ran them thru the dishwasher and they’re pretty clean altho there is a white haze on them.  But, that may be the lack of phosphate in dishwasher soap as I see it on other things lately too.  I don’t use my muffin pans for muffins so it’s not a big issue for me, but if it matters to you, you might make sure you use one you’re only going to use for crafts (altho it looks clean).

All of this makes me wish my kids were in elementary school again.  And I think crayon wash off of  the walls, right?  Right?!