DIY Bath Crayons

Bath time in our house is a big deal the kids love to play in the water and drench anything in site, and that time of night means it's almost bed time, a.k.a. a little quite time for Mommy and that also makes me happy, happy, happy!!!

When the kiddos aren't flooding their bathroom with rouge splashes, drawing in the tub is the next best thing and it takes a lot less towels to clean up.  The kids love their bath paints we made, but the crayons are a fun change so I decided to give them a try.  During a recent trip to hobby lobby I finally saw some glycerin soap and picked up a bag.  This big bag was less than ten dollars and with a coupon only six, which is about what one small package of the bath crayons costs and this will make about ten times as many.  For the colors I bought some fun bath soap dyes at Michaels for around three dollars, I also I grabbed some regular cheap food coloring to compare results.  The silicone mold is from IKEA, (but I bought it on ebay) you could use any candy mold you have in any shape.  I liked the long pencil like shape of this one, I thought it would make the crayons easy for little hands to hold.

This glycerin already comes in cubes which makes this extra easy.  I just put a few cubes in a glass measuring cup, microwaved it for about a minute and believe it or note, even though you just got started you are almost done!

Next, just for fun I added a few drops of cinnamon vanilla essential oil I had left over from making sugar scrubs, but that is totally up to you.  Now comes the color.  Every recipe and tutorial I could find on making bath crayons suggested to use the special soap dyes and to go easy on the color, just a drop or two then pout into the molds so that's what I did.

 About an hour later I was so excited when I popped them out of the molds, aren't they pretty?  Problems is they don't show up on the tub, which sort of defeats the point of the project.

 So I melted a couple more cubes of glycerin and this time ditched the soap dyes and used my cheap old grocery store food coloring.  My advice be heavy handed with the food coloring!  It will look super dark and you will probably have visions of a blue stained tub for life, but in order to see your little artists creations you need lots of the color.  This is what they look like once they cool and harder... pretty great right?!?

These vibrant crayons were a HUGE hit in our house.  So simple and easy to make and I haven't had any problems with stains even with the ridiculous amount of food coloring I used!  I'm guessing the soap helps keeps the color for doing any damage.  Test a spot on your tub just to be sure, but like I said we have gone crazy with these and had no issues.  I do make sure that the "artists" wipe off their "canvas" after each session so it's ready for next time... they think it's fun and Mommy doesn't have to go back and wipe it off later, that's a win win in my book! As a bonus when the colors get dropped into the water they turn the water fun colors too!!!

These are not only fun for your own kids, but I think they would be super cute wrapped up with some bath toys and a cute hooded towel as a gift!  Or just stuck in their stockings this Christmas!  Hope you like my latest adventure tacking yet another DIY project and that it inspires you to give it a try as well, if you do be sure to let me know how it turns out!

UPDATE:
We've noticed that if you throw all these crayons together in a cup or basket like we do while wet they may stick together when they dry.  To fix this lay them flat or just dunk them in the water to separate at the start of the next bath art session :)

Enjoy,