Use old crayons to embellish plain candles.
What cha need:
- old/disposable muffin pan
- cookie sheet and oven or electric hot plate (hot plate is better but I don’t have one)
- old crayons
- Natural bristle brushes (they won’t melt), Cotton swabs worked okay too
- Plain candle
- **Also, you can use a tjanting (batiking) tool if you have enough wax to dip into (I didn’t)
Break crayons into muffin pan and melt. I melted mine on cookie sheet in the oven at 250 degrees F for 5 minutes. I had to re-melt a couple of times because the wax cools quickly.
Paint your design on your candle. Sometimes it helps to let some wax cool on the brush to harden and give you some control. I used cotton swabs to dot the pink and silver. You can use a pencil or toothpick to scrape in your design first.
Use a candle lighter to melt the wax into the candle if it is sitting on the surface. This also creates a watercolor look.
I still haven’t seen what happens when the candle melts down. I would imagine that the crayon wax will melt down the candle. It could be cool, it could make a mess. It’s best just to put a glass catch under the candle.
I use an electric skillet set on low to melt my wax and crayons. I do crayon batik and an electric skillet keeps me from having to remelt numerous times and won’t burn the colors. I fount mine at a garage sale for $1!
Thanks for the tip! I’ll be on the lookout for one!
wow, that does look cool. im gonna try to make some myself!
This is not only super easy and cool, but I used to love melting crayons as a kid. Finally an excuse to do it as an adult.
What a fantastic project! It looks great. I can’t wait to try this with my kids. Thank you for the tutorial and clear instructions.
That’s beautiful.
Another use for melted crayons: Sharpen them and melt the shavings for designs. For instance, cut construction paper into notecard size, fold in half, and on the half that will be the top cover, sprinkle the multicolored shavings in any pattern you like. Lay another prepared notecard on top and lightly iron. You may want to have a sheet of cardboard as an ironing board. For Christmas, my son used red and green shavings to make Christmas cards.
You can also iron the shavings between sheets of waxed paper, run a thread through it, and use it as a light catcher in the window.
I put my melted crayons in cupcake wrappers. That way I didn’t ruin my muffin tins and also I could put the cupcake wrappers away in my candle making box for the next time, or just throw the ones out that were too messy.
We gave some as gifts, and made crayon cards to go along with them. We put our paper on the hotplate and drew onto the card. If you draw slow enough, the candle melts and it’s as beautiful as the candles!!! Thanks for this website. It was great inspiration!!!
This looks amazing, I have to try it sometime!