A brief addendum to my Toddler Crayons post...
Have you ever noticed how most cheap (dollar store, restaurant, promotional, etc) crayons never seem to color real well. You go to fill in the fun little color/game sheet... or doodle out the awesome [albeit primary colored] design, which had been so carefully procreating in that ingenious little mind of yours.... Only to be left with nothing but a [clear] waxy residue and a little bit of awry color... ? Mmmhmm... annoying.
I figured, what harm could a few "low-class" ones do? After all, there aren't that many of them... and, I was mixing them with a majority of good crayons. (heh, right... famous last words). Honestly, I figured they would melt into the other ones... maybe leaving one or two lame spots... but otherwise, be no big deal at all. Sadly, I now see the fallacy in that logic. Upon baking and cooling our beautiful crayons.... I noticed the top of each one was lighter in color than the rest of the crayon. Come to find out... all that extra cheap wax, had risen to the top during baking.. resulting in nothing more than a clear layer of pure annoyance.
Well, let's just say, those little buggers are not any better in Toddler crayons!
I figured, what harm could a few "low-class" ones do? After all, there aren't that many of them... and, I was mixing them with a majority of good crayons. (heh, right... famous last words). Honestly, I figured they would melt into the other ones... maybe leaving one or two lame spots... but otherwise, be no big deal at all. Sadly, I now see the fallacy in that logic. Upon baking and cooling our beautiful crayons.... I noticed the top of each one was lighter in color than the rest of the crayon. Come to find out... all that extra cheap wax, had risen to the top during baking.. resulting in nothing more than a clear layer of pure annoyance.
If you look closely at the bottom of the crayons in this picture,
you'll see the lighter layer of clear wax...
you'll see the lighter layer of clear wax...
Here's what I did to fix to the situation....
Since I already had my toaster oven heated up (I was cooking a sweet potato for KB), and the top gets really hot... I lined small cookie sheet with aluminum foil, and rubbed the tops of the crayons to soften them.
Then I took the large holed side of an old grater and grated down the clear layer of each crayon...
Finished it with the fine side of the grater...
And then lightly rubbed it back on the heat, to smooth them out...
The result... a slightly less tall, but much more operable crayon!
Moral of this story...
Higher end (ie Crayola) crayons work best for this project!!
Higher end (ie Crayola) crayons work best for this project!!
1 comment:
Oh boy, can I relate!! I am a preschool director/teacher at a small church preschool, and I tried to use those "other" crayons as well....once! Sign me up as a spokesperson for Crayola :)
PS...Beautiful blog! Keep it up!
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