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You are here: Home / Projects / Crafts and Projects for Kids / Recycling Old Crayons into Rainbow Crayons: Fun Art Project

Recycling Old Crayons into Rainbow Crayons: Fun Art Project

July 21, 2017 By Angie Kauffman · PRINTABLES TIP: Always go toward the end of a post to find the printable. · Disclosure: This Post May Contain Affiliate Links. {I may be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.}

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When my kids were much younger, we always had lots of crayons around the house. In fact, we got to the point where we had a container full of broken crayons or old crayons. I had been reading a lot about recycling old crayons into new, rainbow crayons, and I knew it would be a perfect project for us!

Easy and Fun Family Art Project to Upcycle Crayons: Recycling Old Crayons into New Rainbow Crayons | Real Life at Home

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Easy and Fun Family Art Project: Recycling Old Crayons into New Rainbow Crayons

I have updated the post below about recycling old crayons that I originally wrote in 2008. It looks like it might be time to do this project again sometime though because when Molly saw that I was working on this update, she said that she’s seen this craft before and it looks fun. I said, “You see those little hands working? That’s you nine years ago.”

Recycling Old Crayons into New Rainbow Crayons: Project Directions

Gather Your Crayons

You’ll first want to gather up all of the crayons that you want to use to make your new rainbow crayons. We used to keep all of our old crayons in one tub together, so it made our gathering easier.

Prep Your Old Crayons

Broken Crayons Ready for Making Upcycled Rainbow Crayons

Peel the labels off of any crayons that still have labels on them. If your kids are very young, this might be too difficult for them. However, definitely have them give it a try. When we made our new crayons, I worked on peeling off labels while my boys were working on school work.

Everyone then enjoyed breaking crayons into smaller pieces, unless they were already small enough to fit into the heart-shaped silicone mini cupcake liners we were using. We initially gathered all of our crayon pieces into a larger bowl before putting them in the liners, however.

Shhh…don’t tell the crayon police. But, we even broke up some crayons that weren’t broken, but whose colors we just really liked.

Here’s an inexpensive set of heart-shaped mini baking cups:

If you want to try some other shapes, this inexpensive set that includes hearts, stars, flowers, and circles looks super cool:

Place Crayon Pieces into Cupcake Liners

Upcycling Old Crayons to Make Fun, New Rainbow Crayons

We filled our mini heart muffin cups with the broken crayons while our oven preheated to 275 degrees. The kids loved filling up the cups.

Crayon Placement Tip: Be careful not to put too many dark crayons in the same cup together. Too many dark colors together kind of overpowered some of our crayons.

Melting/Baking the Crayons

We left the crayons in the oven at 275 degrees for approximately 10 minutes. I kept an eye on them throughout. Here they are partially melted.

Recycling old crayons by melting them into new rainbow crayons

Finishing Your New Rainbow Crayons

Let the crayons cool down before you try to pop them out of the cups. You can actually melt them in paper cups as well — I just wanted mine to be heart shaped.

Upcycle Your Old Crayons into Heart-shaped Rainbow Crayons

Enjoy your cute new crayons! Maybe even share them with some friends, depending on how many you made.

Easy and Fun Family Art Project: Recycling Old Crayons to Create New Rainbow Crayons

Heart-shaped ones like these would be perfect for adding to homemade valentines or along with some of my free printable valentine card sets!

Step-by-step directions for making your own rainbow heart crayons


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Easy and Fun Family Art Project to Upcycle Crayons: Recycling Old Crayons into New Rainbow Crayons | Real Life at Home

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. They don’t change the price you pay. However, when you shop using them, we may receive a small compensation.

Recycling Old Crayons into Rainbow Crayons: Fun Art Project was originally published on October 6, 2008. This post was updated in July 2017.

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Filed Under: Crafts and Projects for Kids, DIY and Projects Tagged With: art, rainbows

About Angie Kauffman

Angie, mom to three very fun kids, is the founder of Real Life at Home.  With degrees in elementary education (B.A.) and special education (M.S.Ed.), as well as being a former homeschooler, she is passionate about supporting both parents and teachers by providing printables, crafts, and activities to help children learn and grow.

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Comments

  1. Bev says

    July 24, 2017 at 6:06 am

    They are so cute. I did this before with a friend, for a school project, I remember placing too much black (or dark blue) it almost made the other colors non-existent. haha.. but it was a great experience. Thanks for sharing

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Meet Angie

Angie, mom to three very fun kids, is the founder of Real Life at Home.  With degrees in elementary education (B.A.) and special education (M.S.Ed.), as well as being a former homeschooler, she is passionate about supporting both parents and teachers by providing printables, crafts, and activities to help children learn and grow. Read More…

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