Little Pie's pastel pies

Pastel pies are simply recycled crayons.

The materials required can easily be found in thrift stores as noted in a post about party favors on The Thrifty Chicks.

I bought five pounds of old crayons in plastic bags at a 50% off day at ARC. They cost $2. Little Pie and I made over 250 pastel pies on one rainy afternoon. This was enough to give each child in her classroom a generous set of pastel pies for Valentine's Day.

It'd be a waste to buy new crayons to recycle them, so please buy thrift.

The process was easy. We peeled the paper off the crayons and sorted them by color family.

We chopped them up,

and dropped assorted colors into small muffin tins. They went into the oven at 200 degrees until melted. Afterward we let them cool for about five minutes and placed them in the freezer to harden. Once frozen, the pastels pop out of the tin.

I think the fun part is making up our own names for the colors. For example, the color of the pie on the top right is Icy Storm.

Sometimes, we note images in certain pastel pies. What do you see in the three below?

Little Pie and I see a woman with a papoose on her back on the left. We see a child's face in the lower left of the middle pastel pie. A squirrel appeared to us on the right pastel pie.

This activity could easily be one for a young child's birthday party. It would require a lot of prep work (peeling, sorting and chopping), but children could make their own pastels and take them home as party favors.