I have a confession. The candle at the top of this page is not the red, white and blue crayon candle I was going to tell you about today. I had planned on writing up a quick post about this candle:
Pretty isn't it? The older girls made it using the traditional melt, and pour method over a wick in a Dixie cup.
They accidentally got some water in with the white crayon pieces, as they were melting, creating holes in that layer.
We liked the look though, so there wasn't really a problem. That is to say...
...there wasn't a problem with the holes. The candle itself was another story.
It wouldn't burn. It sat there looking great for about 5 seconds after we lit it. Then, as the flame moved down the wick, toward the crayon, it started to sputter, and spark, and went out.
We tried lighting it again. We tried digging out a trench around the wick. We tried Googling for answers - we maybe should have done that first. Apparently, crayon candles don't actually burn - not unless they have a good bit of paraffin wax melted in with the crayons.
But, as strange as it might sound - a plane old unmelted crayon, still in the wrapper - will burn (a little lesson the teens picked up on some survivor/life hack type site, a while back). It doesn't make sense to me why the one would work, while the other doesn't. I'm guessing it has something to do with materials in the wrapper.
But, there you have it. Our crayon candle turned out to be...
...a pretty good crayon, while our crayons...
...turned out to be excellent...
...candles.
I'm not sure burning crayons is exactly safe, you should probably check out all the warnings and cautions before you try it. But I have to say, we thought it was fabulous.
Happy Flag Day!
lol...this is great! It is a fascinating puzzle, for sure.
ReplyDeleteFunny!
ReplyDeleteCindy
Interesting experiment. Good to know they could work as a fire starter in an emergency.
ReplyDeleteThat's too funny! I love that it worked out that way :)
ReplyDeleteI read another blog post that was trying to address this, and I think it's at least partially the paper around the crayon. There's a blog I read that goes through and tries different pinterest science related tricks and tries to see if they're really possible.
ReplyDeleteHow fascinating! I think we'll try this outside sometime. Sounds perfect for my fire-adoring DH.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that crayons can burn. I learned something new today!
ReplyDeleteLOL - love it.
ReplyDeleteHow fascinating that crayons in their wrappings burn. I had no idea how interesting candle science was until recently!