DIY -- Molded Crayons

I am so excited about some of the things I made this weekend, but I can't show you until after the parties this weekend. I am hosting a bridal shower Saturday in Illinois and helping out with a birthday party on Sunday in Indiana. I'll have a lot to show you come Monday!

The birthday girl loves coloring and drawing. So, for her John Deere party, we decided to create favors that speak to one of her favorite activities.

We found these free and printable John Deere coloring book pages and thought it would be a great touch for each kid to have a set of their own. Then I had the bright idea to make each kid some tractor shaped crayons to go with the coloring pages. I found some on etsy but for $1/crayon. For 7 kids plus shipping, that'd add up fast!

The finished crayons!

So, it was DIY time. J bought me two sets of tractor molds off of E-Bay for around $2 each, including shipping.

1. Remove the crayon wrapping and sort by crayon color.

2. Prep cans by removing food, removing the label, cleaning the inside of the can and drying it thoroughly.

3. Break up crayons into smaller pieces and put each color in a separate can.

4. Melt the crayons. Please trust me when I tell you to use only high quality crayons. Lesser quality ones will not melt... they just won't. Please note: metallic colors take longer to melt. For us, the cans in boiling water held up by tongs method worked great but you may want to use a heating pad to protect your hands.

5. Pour the melted crayons into the mixture. From our experience it takes about 2.5 crayons to fill one tractor mold.

6. Let the crayons re-mold. This could take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. We put them in the freezer to speed things up!

7. Remove them from the mold by gently applying pressure from the opposite side of the tray. Set them out to harden overnight.

8. Package and use!

J couldn't believe how easy these were to make! It would've cost us more than $40 if we'd have bought them from etsy. Our cost us $4 for molds, $1 for crayons and probably $2 in canned food that I tried my best to eat up over the weekend... $7 for everything! $1 per child. Not bad!

As always, if you don't want to DIY, you can buy them straight from etsy!