Wax Crayon Donuts

It's 4am, and right now Mini-M is 'self-settling' in her cot on the other side of the room whilst I supervise. In actual fact she is grumping to herself and taking out her rage on her toy bunny, whilst I blog to keep myself awake. Fun times.

Last week, I thought it would be interesting to let Mini-M start experimenting with some crayons, based on the success of our Christmas Card 'writing'. I was a bit concerned, however, that in her enthusiasm any crayons I gave her would end up in her eye, or rammed into her mouth, and whilst the baby crayons I could find on the market were chunky and more rounded, they were still pretty pointy.

My solution was to get some crayons, and unpeel them, ( I used about 6 crayons to make 5 mini donut crayons), chop them up, and re-melt them in a little silicone mini-donut tray I have. I popped them in a hot oven (about 200C) and watched them like a hawk for about 7 minutes, until I could see all the wax pieces had melted, then took them out and left them to cool in the tray. Once cool, they popped out no problem.

I am pleased to report crayon art exploration session no.1 has been a success with eyes intact, and the crayon subjected only to some curious licking. She even made some marks on the piece of paper (and proportionally a few more on the table around the edges! The moral of that story is to use bigger paper!).

One word of caution - keep the kitchen window/door open when melting, for ventilation, and any little ones out of the way. The crayons I used weren't too fume-y, but I got the feeling that they could be, and melting crayon fumes are probably not that good for anyone to be breathing in, particularly not teenies.