Beeswax Crayons

No... these aren't chocolates or soap! They're beeswax crayons for my little one. They contain one part beeswax to one part vegetable glycerine soap plus food coloring. The beeswax and soap are first grated and then melted down in a double boiler with the dye and then put into molds. I tried one batch using white soap as there was some discrepancy in the recipes out there, but it was a flop so I'd stick to the glycerine. They are a bit softer than regular crayons... closer to pastels. I used a silicon ice cube tray for these heart shaped molds. I also used some hard plastic molds, but they proved much harder to get the crayons out. If you make these, you should wait a couple days to remove them from the molds as they need to dry thoroughly.


I made natural dyes that I plan on using for Easter eggs and other art projects as well. Ithink I used between 1-2 tbsp each color. The big surprise was that when the colors mixed with the yellow beeswax they of course came out different than the color I thought they would. The red cabbage dye... which is somewhere between purple and blue, came out green! Makes sense... yellow+blue= green. The lavender color crayon was from a red raspberry dye... that one was a bit perplexing. The only color that came out right was the one with the turmeric dye... yellow+yellow= yellow, of course!

My homemade dyes were boiled with water first with the plant or spice and allowed to steep overnight for stronger colors. I used red cabbage (blue- purple), turmeric(yellow) and raspberries(red-pink). When I use these for Easter eggs I'll need to boil them again with a couple of tbsp of vinegar. There's a nice post about naturally dyed Easter eggs over at "Lavender and Limes".

If you're wondering, I made these crayons last weekend... I am still as much a slug today as I was yesterday!