A day with the Crayola Crayon Maker

For Christmas I was able to get the Crayola crayon maker for my daughters (I know I could just make crayons in the oven).  But this seemed like I could get my daughters more involved with the process of making the crayons.   We bought it from Target I think for 20$ with a 3$ rebate so it wasn't to bad of a price.  I think online at Amazon it was 15$-20$ and you could still use the rebate from Crayola (friend them on Facebook).



The Crayola crayon maker is pretty easy to setup, just remember that you need to purchase a 60 watt bulb.  It had a few pieces that you had to put together but nothing complicated, it took maybe 10 minutes to assemble and have it ready to go.

After that I had my daughters go on a search for all broken crayons that we have in the house and bring them to the table (easier said then done with a 5 and 3 year old).  They easily got distracted, but we where well on our way with a few pieces of broken crayons.

In the first batch we had red, purple, green and yellow I believe.  After we tried the first batch I read that you might want to add more light colors to help it out.  Another thing that I wanted to try but didn't was to just make a crayon all the same color (say find a few broken red crayons and create a new red crayon)

Here is the initial pictures right as we started up the crayon maker.  Still have out the Christmas table cloth you can see.

Our initial selection of crayons (all too dark I think)

Ready to fire up the crayon maker and let the fun begin.  What I didn't realize until after I started (because who really reads directions anyway) is that it take about 25 minutes for the whole process to completed (from starting up to melting to pouring the crayons.)  You kind of loose the kids interest by the 10 minute mark if there is nothing else going on.  I had to let them run around and do other thing and call them back occasionally to check up on the progress to keep them interested.

This is after about 5 minutes.

Near the 20 minute mark, nice colors forming here. Red and purple.

Last one of me pouring the crayons.  

The have only a few concerns about this product.  One is the cleanup its not hard its just a pain to get it clean, you have to clean it while its still pretty warm to get majority of the wax out.  Secondly I hope that there is the ability to have different molds for the crayons.  I know it comes with a standard crayon mold but it would be could if you could have other shapes (maybe I will make something out of moldrite for that (void all warranties probably)