Melted Crayon Mosque {Tutorial}

June 7, 2018June 14, 2018 acraftyarab Ramadan Crafts

Our Ramadan craft today answers the question of what to do with all those broken crayons now that the school year is over.

I know we have an entire bin of them in our house and I hate to throw them away. I went through them all and pulled the reds and yellows to make this mosque melted crayon gift for one of my daughter’s teachers.

Rather then use traditional molds, I went out into the back yard and dug through my daughter’s sand toy bin we take to the beach in the summer. I remember that she had a Taj Mahal sand shaper mold and wanted to try to use it. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but I recently found out one of my daughter’s teacher’s was Muslim and really wanted to find a gift that was extra special.

Since she is Indian, she will understand the significance of the Taj Mahal, which was build in 1643. It incorporates and expands on design traditions of Persian and earlier Mughal architecture. One of the specific inspiration was from the Jama Masjid (Arabic for Mosque) in Delhi, India.

I had the supplies on hand except for the metal serving cup. It did a great job of melting the crayons, without costing a lot of money. Since it’s stainless steal, it was easy to clean.

Supplies

Taj Mahal sand shaper
Broken, paperess, crayons
Metal cup
Thongs
Xacto
Cutting board

I used the Xacto to take the paper off the crayons and also to break them up into much smaller pieces.

I wanted to make the top of the dome and minarets yellow so added the broken crayons to those areas and used the thongs to hold the upside down mold over boiling water.

Once the yellow had melted, I placed the mold into a cup to hold it while I worked on breaking up the red.

I placed the broken red into a metal cup and added that in the middle of a small amount of boiling water.

Once the red crayon melted, I added it to the mold and continued until it was full. This photo was taken at the end since I was nervous holding the hot wax around my phone.

Let the crayon mosque cool completely for a few hours. Then I just turned it right side up off the cup and gravity eventually did it’s job. Try not to tap or squeeze the crayon mold as it easily cracks the crayon inside. Because I was melting the crayons in small batches, the effect left a layered look on the finished piece. I wonder what it would look like with different colors!