Holiday Crayons

It’s fun to try out new molds with each batch of crayons that I recycle. This time I had molds for three holidays to pick from: Christmas, Halloween and Easter. Wow, I can make three dozen Easter egg crayons at a time!

As you can tell by their pristine condition, I’m saving the Easter egg molds for another time. I’m hoping to find a coordinating mold, maybe a bunny! Either the chocolate or the furry kind would be fine with me. Out of curiosity I googled ‘Jell-o Jiggler Easter molds’. Look at what Amazon has! But at $25.00, that’s not thrifty at all!! Well, it’s only June; I have plenty of time to find a much better deal before Easter.

As a matter of fact, I have plenty of time before Halloween and Christmas too! But I had these new molds to test…

Um, excuse me, suddenly I want to know, and I bet you’d like to know too, just how much does a new Christmas Jiggler mold usually cost? Follow that link to find out! (I only found used Halloween ones.)

Well, my molds may no longer be pretty and new, but they sure make pretty crayons! About one hundred and twenty each of Christmas,

and Halloween ones.

The little gold stars I made with the little red ice-cube tray feel right at home among the crayons from the Halloween molds. The tray (available here) feels like silicone, but I suspect it’s not, because its label says “Not Recommended For Use in Microwave and Dishwasher”. I did not tempt fate by trying it in the oven.

The Jell-o Jiggler molds are plastic and can’t go in the oven either, so I used the melt and pour method, which works with clear plastic Wilton candy molds too. They are much easier to find than Jell-o molds; every big box craft store has some!

I needed to melt more colors than the last time I used this stove top technique, so I messed-up a second old saucepan. Agh! It just dawned on me… I could have set all of the cans into a single frying pan. (quietly banging head on kitchen counter) Maybe the kitchen would have become a little less steamy (keep at least half an inch of water in the pans) if I’d done it that way! lol.

Obviously I am not a tidy crayon maker, but luckily it isn’t hard to clean crayon off the stove or counter top. An old credit card helps with cleanup; it’s a handy scraper that won’t scratch.

You can learn from my mistakes…

If the top of a can is too hot for you to easily hold it with your bare hand in order to fill molds, turn down the heat! lol.

Another tip…

Don’t fill the can more than half way with crayon pieces!

You’ll want to start pouring as soon as enough wax has melted to fill one mold cavity, but if the level of loose unmelted pieces is too high, some will tumble out when you attempt to pour. This can splatter molten crayons everywhere! Guess how I know that. lol. groan.

Jell-o molds give such beautiful details! (I didn’t have enough white crayons to make snowmen.)

I also baked over two hundred and fifty of my traditional all-season Rainbow Crayons. Each stake is three or four crayons high. Click here to learn about baking crayons in metal and silicone pans.

Don’t be alarmed if the top of your rainbow crayons look like this when you take them out of the oven.

It’s their undersides that are pretty!

Wilton’s Animals cookie candy mold is a fun way to add neutral colors to a rainbow crayon gift bag. Please remember – do not put these molds in the oven!  Use them with the stove top technique instead.

I’m going to quickly put some of my new rainbow crayon sets (3 rainbows & 1 animal) into cutely labeled gift bags, a local charity will add them to sandpails filled with toys for children who visit DCF this summer. Oh, and that reminds me, I want to get some more bubbles while they’re on sale, 3/$1 this week at ACMoore!