Wax crayon art: planets

 

Our little crayon planets. Some were more successful than others!

I wanted to start our 'wax crayon' week with something simple that also manages to use up those nasty crayon ends that just live on in the box forever. I found a great pinterest board here which gave me the inspiration.

 

The original activity comes from Sandy Toes and Popsicles which shows some incredibly looking mini planets. I have to say that this is a really simple activity and my boys enjoyed trashing their candles. We think that the Earth type planets look good, the coloured ones less so. The dark green disc? I don't know what happened there!

 

Some tips: Try not to mix your crayons. We had a few stockmar beeswax crayons (website chosen at random) which didn't mix well with the normal crayons. I found that the oven temperature listed was too high but every oven is different, I recommend starting lower and turning it up if you need to. Keep the extractor on, these smoke badly if the oven temperature is too high. Don't try using a little bit of white candle wax to substitute for white crayon, the melting temperature is different, it will just float to the top side. Finally, they really do pop out of the tray when cool but cleaning the tray is best done with boiling water. If your sink is large enough for the tray to sit in then just leave it in the water until it is cold, the wax will melt and reset on the water's surface. I couldn't do this so I just rinsed the tray with boiling water into the washing up bowl ready to tip out the waste water straight onto the garden. Do not pour it down the drain as the wax could solidify and cause a blockage.  

 

As you may have guessed I made all of the above mistakes apart from blocking the drain. My candle making knowledge finally had a purpose!