How to Make DIY Crayon Letters for Names

As I’ve mentioned before, I LOVE to plan my kids birthday parties. So, I was looking for cool ideas for my daughters Art Party, and I ran across these on Pinterest. I knew immediately that I wanted to make some for party favors. So I started looking on Amazon for some alphabet molds. I found the perfect mold, and got to work on a plan. I wrote out all of the kids names and figured out how many of each letter I would need. Finally, I was ready to get started. Here’s how to make DIY crayon letters for names or to use individually.

NOTE: I have included some extra tips and tricks down below!

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Supplies

• Crayons (I bought mine at Walmart during the back to school sale for $.50/box)
• Alphabet mold
• Cookie Sheet
• medium sized bowl of hot water
• scissors or a knife to cut up the crayons
• oven

Step 1: Peeling Paper from the Crayons

First, fill your bowl with hot tap water, and dump any crayons with paper on them into the water. Let the crayons soak for about 5-10 minutes. I’m sure you are wondering why in the world you need to put your crayons into water!?!. Well, the hot water helps to release the glue on the paper of the crayons. As a result, the paper will peel off quickly and easily without a ton of effort on your part. You will know they are ready when you can see the paper starting to peel away from the crayons.

Step 2: Preheat the Oven

Preheat your oven to 225 degrees. You want a lower temperature so that you don’t burn your mold or burn the wax in the crayons letters.

Step 3: Breaking up the Crayons

Use a knife or scissors to cut the crayons into small pieces. I think I tried to cut each full size crayon into 8 pieces. Smaller pieces fill the molds better so that when they melt the mold is at least half full. With the amount of letters that I needed to make, I found it easier to have all the crayons cut and sorted in bowls/cups based on the colors. Doing this allowed me to just grab the colors I wanted to fill each mold with instead of stopping to cut them up each time.

Step 4: Filling the mold to make the crayon letters

Fill your crayon molds with the broken crayons. You can use all the same color combinations (like the letter B) or combine several colors on each letter. (like letter A) This is where you can be creative and have fun. You will need to fill the mold where the crayons stick above the mold a little.

Step 5: Bake the Crayon Letters

Place your molds in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, until all of the crayons are melted and look liquidy (that’s a word, right?) and smooth and not lumpy. (SORRY I forgot to take a picture of this step 🙁

Step 6: Cool your Crayon Letters

Remove the crayons from the oven carefully, being sure not to spill any of the melted wax. Set them somewhere that they can cool for an extended period of time, overnight is best.

Step 7: Your DIY Crayon Letters are DONE!!

Once your crayons are cooled completely, remove them from your molds. And Enjoy your beautiful DIY crayon letters!

Tips & Tricks for DIY Crayon Letters:

• Instead of soaking the crayons, you could also use an x-acto knife and cut a slit down the paper and peel them by hand
• You can break the crayons into pieces by hand, but your pieces will be larger and your molds may not be full once the crayon melts.
• If you do not have an alphabet mold, but want to make some fun crayons you can use a muffin tin with paper liners.
• Also, if you have any silicone ice cube molds you can use them as long as they are heat resistant. If you don’t have silicone molds I have used the ice cube trays from IKEA for $1 and have seen some molds in the Dollar Spot at Target (although I have never tried them).
• I have also heard of people using old chocolate candy molds BUT you must melt the crayons first (either in a mug in the microwave or in a double boiler) and then pour the melted crayon into the mold.
• If all the molds are not filled with crayons you can add flour to that cavity. Having something in each cavity will help keep the mold from burning or melting if you plan to use them a lot.
• I recommend using Crayola name brand non-washable crayons. I have used some of the cheaper brand crayons before and it seems like they have more wax and less color. The crayons seem to separate more than the Crayola brand. See the separation of the Lego bricks. Those crayons are all one color. The lighter part is just the wax that rose to the top of the mold.

These DIY crayon letters are a great way to use up old and broken crayons. I have a friend who works in the childcare industry and have even asked them to save their broken crayons for me. crayon letters make great Valentine gifts, party favors, birthday gift tags, back to school gifts and so much more. You can even package them up to make them look extra special.