DIY Recycled Crayons - A Valentine's Day Gift Idea

Aaaah, the month of February. It gives us an extra-special reason to spread the love, particularly crafty love. In my house, crafting and hand-making things is something that brings me life. It gives me energy. However, I understand that crafting may have the opposite effect on some of you. Trust me when I say it takes all kinds. So you’re not a crafter? Well, I’m not a cleaner. How about we trade — I’ll make your Valentines and you come do my laundry?!

This project is for those who love to craft AND for those who look at crafting like Harry Potter does Voldemort. It’s an easy-peasy one that you can do with even the littlest members of your household in less than an hour!

Speaking of the littlest ones, now that I have a boy in the house I think about the Valentines we give in a different light. What once was an orgy of pink-and-red-and-hearts-and-glitter on our craft table has morphed into a (slightly) more gender-neutral tableau. Now, Micah is only 10 months old so it’s not as if he’s handing out Valentines this year. However, I’m a little more sympathetic to the boys in Eva’s class who will likely go home with eyes crossed from all the bubble-gum pink in their mailboxes.

That being said, deciding to make tokens that everyone can appreciate was easy. I mean, who doesn’t love a crayon?

We have a stash of used crayons that looks like this:

What a mess! Obviously a crayon is no good to our master-crafter after it’s lost its sharp point. This holiday has given us the perfect reason to recycle these colorful castoffs. We searched our treasure trove for red, pink, and orange crayons then removed their wrappers. I cut them up into small chunks and Eva sprinkled them into a heart-shaped silicone ice-cube tray that I picked up at Ikea a few years ago for this same project. NOTE: I recommend sticking to lighter colored crayons. The darker blue, purple, and green colors are too dark — they end up looking black when all melted together. I found this out the hard way a few years ago the first time Eva and I made these.

We popped the tray into a 150 degree oven for about 20 minutes until all the wax was melted. After allowing the crayons to cool completely we took the hearts out of the trays. Cuteness!

NOTE: Your silicone tray may no longer be food safe (at least I couldn’t get all the wax out after we did this a few years ago — but again, I am not a cleaner). I have found that there are plenty of other non-food uses for a heart-shaped tray though — play dough, cloud dough, and homemade bath fizzies to name a few.

One heart shaped crayon will accompany each of our Frozen Valentines. If you haven’t seen them yet, check out these FREE printables!