Recycled Crayon Party Favors

It is full on party count down at my house. Penelope will be ONE on November 11th. INSANE.

I have been practicing baking for months and have slowly started making all the party decorations including these Recycled Crayon Party Favors. I figured I could wait till after her party and do one ginormous birthday blog post or post as I go along.

First, take the paper off all the crayons. This part is a BITCH. Half way through, I started using an utility knife to cut a slit down the crayon and open them that way. Much easier, but still pretty annoying.

Then if you are a bit OCD like me, line them up in a pretty color combination and admire your hard work.


Then break them up into pieces and drop them into your mold. I used a flower shaped cupcake pan that I bought at Pampered Chef party years ago. The crayon does not come out! So whatever you use, you will be regulating the pan's future only to crayon making. There are all kinds of cheap plastic molds you can get at the craft store instead.

I did three color combos; red, oranges and yellows, then blues and greens, and lastly blues and purples.




























You bake them in the oven at 275 for about 10 minutes. But just watch them, the second they are all melted take them out to start cooling. The more they melt in the oven, the less the color swirls will be. And do not mix them with a stick while in the oven, it makes the swirls less as well (learned from experience, trust me).

Here is another tutorial on how do this a slightly different way.

It's a great way to make use of  old, broken crayons.  For the sake of full disclosure, I used half old, broken crayons and half new crayons that I scored at Target for $1.

Recycle, Reuse, Refashion IV

 I used to be a nanny to two very sweet little girls, Ava Grace, who just turned 5 and Ella Shea, just turned 4, who also happens to be my Goddaughter. Yes, they are 12 months apart in age! It was HARD WORK, but oh, so fun.

I needed to whip them up something for their birthdays, so I poked around in my fabric stash and old clothing pile to see what I could come up with. I picked this drawstring skirt and dress to turn into pillow cases dresses. Then I rummaged around in my ribbon bin and found coordinating ribbon. I also had two hair pins and two buttons in my button cover pack to make them matching hair pins. I wrapped in them saved tissue and present bags that I had on hand. Not ONE thing was new, but the everything turned out beautiful!
















I just cut off the tops of the dress and skirt and it left me the shape of a pillow case. Here is a great tuturiol on how to make pillow cases from fabric. Here and here are a couple examples of pillow case dresses I have done in the past. They are so stinkin easy, once you get the hang of it.

And here is a pic of the hair pins. Pretty cute, right? I am so impressed with myself that I made them something handmade and from my heart AND I didn't make one trip to the fabric/craft store to do it!

What do you have laying around that you can turn into something else?
I am about to cut up an old white, eyelet cotton shower curtain!