By Shara Lawrence-Weiss

For years I’ve melted down bits of broken crayons for my kids. I generally use cupcake baking pans and place the crayon pieces into the round cupcake slots. The crayons melt into circular shapes.

Today I attempted to melt down crayon pieces and create long pencil-like crayons. That did not work well because the crayons in the center never melted and the outside crayon pieces melted too much. I removed the pan from the oven and decided to use heart cookie cutters to create heart shaped crayons for my kids for Valentine’s Day.

From there, I tried to melt the crayons down in the microwave; no luck. That was nothing more than a big runny mess and the crayons over-heated and turned grey, even though I melted them in increments of 20 seconds, taking my time.

Next, I decided to place a cookie cutter onto a baking stone, cover it in wax paper and tape it up so the crayons would not melt out from the sides. I then baked the heart crayon at 300 for about 25 minutes. I removed the pan, moved the cookie cutter over to a cold plate and placed that inside the freezer. I wanted the crayon to pop out easily.

The final product turned out great, the crayon is large and usable and my kids love the heart shape for Valentine’s Day!