MAKE-your-OWN crayons

Homemade Bath Time Soap Crayons 1 cup grated Ivory Soap 1/4 cup warm water Food Coloring Plastic Cookie cutters Mix water, soap & food coloring together in med. size bowl. Stir the crayon mixture until it begins to stiffen. Remove the mixture from the bowl and knead until it is the consistency of a very thick dough. Spoon Crayon Mixture into plastic cookie cutters or other plastic molds (playdough molds work great too!). Press down firmly. Place the plastic cookie cutters in your freezer for 10 mins or in your refrigerator for 30 mins. When firm, Pop the bath crayons out of the cookie cutters (or other molds) and allow them to air dry overnight or until hard. Homemade Bath Crayons Add food coloring and warm water, a few tablespoons at a time, to the soap shavings and mix until it forms a thick dough. You can add more water or soap shavings to get the right consistency. Once the dough is firm, you can shape it into crayons by hand or press it into candy molds. We pre-heated an oven (gasp!) to 300 degrees F., turned it off and popped in our tray. (We should have just topped with aluminum foil and sat it on our front steps). Things got goopy very slowly, so I relit the fire for a few minutes. And then things got very liquid. We scribbled them to make sure they worked, and then packaged them up for gifts for friends. We made another batch the next day and they came out even better. Here are a few tips if you want to try this yourself: Use only one brand/kind of crayon. The batch we made of only regular Crayolas melted more evenly. When you throw in the washable ones (very hard to melt) and all the freebies from dining establishments, differential melting becomes a problem as some melt to water-like consistency while other are rock hard. Also, some are more brittle (the washable ones?) and didn't make very strong Cookies for the over-active scribbler. Don't refire the oven if you are too impatient. Just wait and get over it. It'll be a character-modeling lesson for the kids. Right, the kids. 2-3 highly contrasting colors gave the best scribble. The all-shades-of-blue Cookie looked great, but was a little underwhelming when it came to performance testing. 3 full crayons are about all that you'll want in a mini-muffin tin. It looks like it will hold more, but you don't want them coming over the edge and spilling in your oven. Use a pan underneath while the Cookies are in the oven. Last hint: Hit the back-to-school sales now for supplies for Christmas crafts.