We save paper egg cartons for several purposes. Craft projects, seed starting, and one of our favorites, fire-starters. We turned an shrunken and felted wool sweaters into dryer balls. We've remelted broken crayons in muffin tins for years now. Over the weekend, we combined the three and threw in some lint and old candle stubs for good measure.
With our oldest off to college, we realized we no longer needed the box of crayons pictured. In fact we probably never did. We recently read about a company that recycles crayons, but as an individual, not associated with any group, we didn't have nearly enough crayons to send into the company. We also had one of our wool dryer balls come unraveled and several egg cartons. With a bonfire planned for later this week, I decided to make some firestarters.
Step 1: Gather old crayons and candle stubs. You can leave the wrappers on the crayons, but next time I will break the crayons into 1 inch pieces so they fit in the egg carton better.
Step 2: I use an old coffee can that I've bent as you can see in the photo for ease of pouring the melted wax. I set the filled coffee can in the oven on 275 degrees. Don't go hotter than that, so the wax melts without catching on fire.
Step 3: While the wax is melting, stuff the egg carton with lint, the cut up sweater, if you have sawdust that works also.
Step 4: Pour melted wax into egg carton. Let cool
Step 5: Tear each section of the egg carton apart, leaving the paper exposed to use as a sort of wick.
The wax, link, and fabric will keep the fire going long enough to ignite the twigs and kindling. Before long,you'll have a roaring fire without going through 100 matches.
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