Crayon Candles

I have mixed feelings about this program. The tweens liked it, and wanted to make more (eventually we went through two gallon bags of crayons, and had to stop). The materials were inexpensive—$10 worth of votive holders, and a bunch of broken crayons. But the logistics of this program were a little much for our current set-up.

The basic instructions were: melt crayons in the microwave for two minutes. Stir, and pour into the votive holders. Sounds simple enough…but it wasn’t.

First off, you need to peel the crayons. The best piece of advice I can give on this is, let them soak in water overnight. Half of the wrappers will remove themselves and leave the crayon entirely. The others will peel off like buttah (er, I guess butter doesn’t peel…). I saved my fingernails with this shortcut. I did this at home, by myself, because if the peeling had been part of the program, we’d have been there for hours.

I suggest breaking the crayons into little pieces. They melt faster. For some reason, red took the longest to melt, so I broke those into the tiniest pieces. I sorted the crayons by color and let everyone choose a cup full. I warned them that when the colors mix, they might not look like they imagined: for example, red and green look nice next to each other, but if you mix the two colors, it creates brown. The kids had a hard time distinguishing what colors would blend together, and what colors looked good side by side. We had a lot of brown candles, but nobody seemed to mind.

To melt the crayons, I used a couple of glass bowls. The directions I found said the crayons would melt after 2 minutes, but each of my batches took about four minutes. I was using the microwave, which is built-in in another room, about 15 feet from where the program was held. This meant a lot of running back and forth, holding hot containers of wax. I could only do two batches at a time, so there was a lot of waiting around. I made popcorn for while they waited, but I felt bad—there didn’t seem to be enough activity for them in this craft.

After the crayons melted, I poured the wax into a plastic cup (the glass bowl was too unwieldy and hot for the tweens to touch). I suggest waiting a second before pouring the wax in—otherwise, it will melt the bottom of the cup. This seems obvious but I got ahead of myself and…made a huge mess. Then I’d hand the cup to the participant, and they would pour the wax into the little tea light container. It worked well enough, but I was constantly running back and forth, while the kids hung out. It didn’t seem hands-on enough for them, but I couldn’t fit 15 7th graders into our break room, and I didn’t want them to burn themselves.

 

The program ran long—about an hour and forty-five minutes. It also made a huge mess and required a great deal of clean-up. The activity room was full of bits of popcorn and scraps from crayon wrappers (I’d left some wrapped ones out in case we ran out). The kitchen area was covered in colored wax—the counters, the inside of the microwave, the dish towels—and once the wax dried, it was difficult to scrape off. Washing the bowls was almost impossible. I had to keep nuking them to soften the wax, then wiping it out with a paper towel.
I suppose I would do this again, but there are a lot of things I’d do differently:

• Don’t give participants every color in the world to choose from. Give them a couple choices that will blend well together, or buy bigger containers and layer the colors (allow each layer to cool before adding the next one).
• Use ‘disposable’ bowls.
• Bring a hot plate into the room, or a portable microwave, OR cap attendance at a lower number, and bring them into the kitchen area.
• Grab a colleague to hang out in the room, if you’re going to be running back and forth.

 

One thing I was really happy about: the tea light kits were little glass votives. They each came with a wick, anchored to a metal disc, which made the ‘candle’ part really easy. Other methods I’d tried involved waiting for the wax to halfway set, and then poking a hole with a toothpick and trying to shove the wick in there. I tried it, and it was a mess. ‘Splurge’ and get the $5.00 package (for 10) at Hobby Lobby. Speaking of Hobby Lobby, they were the only craft store in my area to carry candle making supplies. I tried Michaels, Joann’s, and Walmart and had no luck.

Another thing I’m really happy about: I saw some new faces at this program! Or rather, I saw some faces that are often at the library, but never in programs, so this was a pleasant surprise.
I’m tempted to try more ‘crayon art’, like the project where you glue crayons to the top of a canvas, and blast them with the hair dryer. We’ll see….I think I’ll work on getting all the dried wax off my shirt before I try a crayon project again!