Seems like every restaurant we go to provides the kids (we have three) with crayons and paper to color on. Which I am totally grateful for because all three of my kiddo's are very artistic. However...we seem to have a crazy amount of crayons and broken crayon pieces. What do you do with them all. You can't throw them away, well at least I can't. But my kids could not use them all even if the colored 24/7. Remembering a newsletter I read oh gosh 8 years ago or so it was about how to live frugally (think she has also written a book 6+ years ago). The article was about how to make rainbow crayons.
My kids love to use these chunky crayons. They are super easy to make! All you have to do is take the wrappers off all the broken crayons, place them into a muffin tin (no paper) we used one the was purchased from salvation army for less than a dollar. You probably would not want to use the muffin tin that you eat out of.
You can mix the colors to make rainbow crayons or use all the same color in each as we did above, totally up to you. Then put the muffin tin into the oven we used 200 degrees, and leave them in there just long enough for the crayons to melt (we watched through the window in the oven). Not too long thought I am not sure if they would burn and stink up your kitchen.
Then you carefully take out the muffin tin, try not to move or shake it too much as you want to try to keep all the melted wax from mixing too much or you will have 12 muddy colored crayons. Set them to cool until they completely re-harden then just pop them out.
