Titanic Multicolored Crayon

This Instructable outlines how to take household crayons melt them down and layer them to make one big crayon with a gradient of colors. You can pipe the crayon wax into silicon mould giving a nice separate color look. In this case I used a silicon ship mould and piped in yellow black red and white for a classic Titanic look. You can use whatever silicon mould you have laying around though, get creative with it. Lets get started!

most of the supplies you should already have in your kitchen, anything else can be bought at your local dollar store.

3 boxes of crayola crayons

some pipettes

silicon mould of your choice (I used titanic mould)

silicon spatula

a knife

stainless steel bowl and pot (for double broiler)

an old rag you are willing to ruin

a empty sink

stove or hot plate

Pick out your caryons by color. I needed red, black, white, and yellow for the boat, and blue for the icebergs. cut the paper wrap from the bottom to the top and strip all the paper off. This part is super annoying at times so be patient. I would suggest doing small moulds I wouldn't want to clean more than a handful of these crayons. I did something like 30 crayons all said and done. After you have all your naked crayons cut them into small pieces and separate them as you plan on using them.

For those who don't know, a double broiler is just a pot of boiling water with a bowl on top. The idea is that the steam from the boiling water heats the bowl above it to 100 degrees Celsius or 212 Fahrenheit. Since in this case the steam cant be hotter than the temperature of boiling water you don't you don't have to worry about accidentally burning your crayons. If you just heated the crayons in a pan on direct heat you could auto-ignite the wax and have a nasty fire in your kitchen so definitely use the double broiler.

Other than that you can just chuck your crayon bits in the bowl and they will melt down to a runny consistency. almost the Viscosity of melted butter. I personally moved the pot and pan together off the stove to the station i was working on. This way the residual heat from the hot water kept my crayons melted. When i removed the bowl from the pot the crayons solidified surprisingly quickly.

Now that your wax is nice and melted draw as much as you can up into a pipette. Then you can pipe it into your mould. I liked the pipette as i could get it into little hard to reach spots like the smoke stacks of the boat mould. In the past have just poured the wax into the mould but that can get pretty messy. If you have the ability to get pipettes I would highly suggest them. Have a spatula handy to waste as little as possible

In this mould I piped the yellow and then the black into the stacks, the white into the bridge, and the black and red into the hull. You can be as creative as you want with the colors in these steps. I had a second mould ready to pipe all the excess wax into when I had used all I needed for the boat.

In between each color I cleaned the bowl and spatula as well as throwing out the pipette and getting a new one.

This step is very finicky. After you use all the wax you can for a given color you need to clean the bowl and the spatula completely or the leftover wax will ruin your next color. Put the bowl and spatula in the sink and run the water as hot as possible. Use an old junk rag to wipe everything clean. You may want to wear gloves as the wax will get under your finger nails and stain your hands. Use a second dry junk rag to dry any leftover water off your equipment before starting over.

After all of that repeat step 2, 3 and 4 for each color layer you want to use.

When your all done your rag might look as cool as the one in the picture! I hung mine on the wall as a weirdo art piece.

When you have filled your mould with all your colors pop it in the fridge or freezer for a half an hour or so. After it has cooled completely pop the crayon out of the mould. Be careful when demoulding as you could snap it and have to start over. If your silicon mould is too stiff you can carefully run hot water over it without wetting the crayon making it easier to demould the crayon.

Sometimes you will end up with splatter and other bits that don't look good. You can just go ahead and trim those parts off with a knife. Be careful to wipe the knife frequently or the darker colors will smudge onto the lighter colors. Just make it look nice don't fiddle too much on this step.

After that clean it all up like in step 4 and your done. The Mould will be hard to clean.

Hope you liked reading this Instructable as much as I liked making it! see you on the bench!