DIY Crafts: How to Make DIY Crayons

Hey, everybody! Recently my niece had her 4th birthday, and when I asked my sister what I should get for her she said, “Coloring books and stationary.” So…I was kind of baffled by this. But apparently my niece loves coloring and writing letters. I thought just a plain coloring book and some paper would be such a boring gift, so I decided to make her some pretty DIY crayons.

So the first step to make your own crayons is to find a silicon mold to melt your wax in. Believe me when I say, an ice cube tray will not work!

Yep! I tried to use this ice cube tray because I thought it would make such cute little star crayons. So, I started by chopping up some crayons and putting them in one of the molds. I then microwaved the mold one minute at a time. After about 7 minutes of microwaving and little to no melting at all, I thought “Okay, the mold hasn’t melted in the microwave. I’m just going to put it in the oven.” And… that was the wrong thing to do. As you can see above, ice cube trays + the oven = no bueno. Craft fail level: 10. “Nailed it!”

Alright, so luckily, I also had these silicone heart cupcake molds. They were a lot bigger than the stars, but I figured a four year old needs bigger crayons any way, right? Technically I believe the silicone molds are for cupcakes or muffins, but they’re definitely oven safe (just make sure to wash them thoroughly after you make your DIY crayons).

If you want to get really fancy, there are some pretty nice silicone molds for cake decorating and/or candy making that you could definitely use for your DIY crayons. I even found these cute little bride & groom silicone molds. How cute would it be to make DIY bride and groom crayons using your wedding colors, and then hand them out with coloring books as wedding favors??!!

So, I peeled all the crayons and broke them up and put them with their respective color family in the silicone molds. I used all Crayola crayons because I’ve heard they are a higher-quality wax. But I’m sure you could use a wide array of different types of crayons.

Depending on the size of the mold that you’re using, you will want to adjust the number of crayons that you use. I used about 7 or 8 chopped up crayons per cupcake mold, and the final DIY crayons turned out fairly large.

I put all of the silicone molds on a cookie tray and put them in the oven at a low heat – about 200 degrees Fahrenheit. They should melt pretty quickly, so just keep an eye on the oven to make sure you don’t get any drippage off the sides.

Once the wax is all melted, you have to let the DIY crayons set. I waited over night before I removed my DIY crayons from their molds. You could probably stick them in the freezer for an hour and you would be fine.

Also, if you wanted to use an ice cube tray as I attempted to do above, you could probably pre-melt the crayons (how to melt crayons) and just let them cool a little before you pour the melted crayons into the ice tray.

One thing I noticed if you want to make your own DIY crayons: the smaller the pieces of crayon, the more “swirly” they will be. So this is a really great activity to keep your kids occupied for a little while. They could use a pencil sharpener to get smaller shavings of crayons, or simply use their tiny little hands to break up the crayons into smaller pieces.

Unfortunately, I didn’t actually get to see my niece open her present (I included some coloring books along with the heart crayons, of course), but I heard that the verdict was “they are too ‘britty’ to use.” Haha, so I guess that’s not a bad thing.

Have you ever made your own DIY crayons? What brand of crayons did you use to make them (or maybe a mixture)?