Animal crayons!

Oh how do I love messing with crayons?? I used to call them cre-yons as a kid (sounds like an offshoot of the Klingon's and Romulans) and I still like doodling with them. Well I decided to make shaped crayons for my nephews for Christmas, I had this genius idea of using my Nordic Ware muffin tins! They are perfect for this project! I went out and bought two brand new box's of crayons for this project. I wanted to have whole crayons to work with, makes removing the wrappers that much easier. So here goes!

Supplies:
*Crayons (I fully recommend you use Crayola crayons. The wrappers are not glued to the crayon. "Generic" brands glue the wrappers to the crayons and are a pain to remove. You end up needing to scrape the crayon with a butter knife or a spoon to remove the wrapper glue.)
*Large pot or bowl
*towel
*Shaped muffin tin (Nordic ware is my fave by far, pictured are the garden bugs and the Zoo friends shapes) (silicone shaped pans work great too, I have a turkey one I used for the metallic crayons, these are not shown)

Step 1: fill your pot or bowl with warm water and dump all your crayons in. Make sure you push them down under the water so they all get wet. Let them soak for a few minutes. Use your hands to mix them a little. You may notice the wrappers already coming off.

Step 2: once the crayons have soaked for a while (5 minutes), gently start to peel the paper off.

Step 3: Set the crayons on a towel to air dry, or you can dry them individually to speed the process along. LOL

Step 4: Group the crayons how you see fit, (for one batch I grouped them into contrasting colors) and break them into 4 pieces per crayon, (I have found that if you dont break them down like this they dont melt evenly and you end up with solid chunks sticking up.) and place into your pan. (I am missing the image for this step but I will get it up soon)

Step 5: Place pan in oven set at 200-225 degrees for about 10 minutes. (You will need to watch your oven as each one varies.) Once the crayons have all melted pull them from the oven and let cool. (I experimented by placing a pan in the fridge to cool it faster and it worked, but i ended up with micro-fractures and these crayons broke very quickly, so i suggest letting them cool at room temp, then once cool, you can pop them in the fridge for 5 mins to make sure there are no mooshy spots.)

Once they are cool, pop'em out and have fun!