“Food Crayon” lets you playfully garnish your dishes with ingredient-flavored shavings! Move over, SaltBae!

Instead of sprinkling fresh herbs or grating parmesan shavings over your food, these flavor-packed crayon-shaped edible sticks let you garnish your food in a playfully fun way!

The wacky idea for crayon-based garnishing comes from Montreal-based Nadia Lahrichi, who runs the company along with her brother, Kamil, and mom, Veronique. Together, they call themselves the Foodie Family and with their combined backgrounds in cooking, biochemistry, and marketing, they’re reinventing how we interact with our food! The Food Crayons really don’t need much explaining – traditional crayons are made from wax and dye and are formed into the crayon shape… Food Crayons, on the other hand, are made from food ingredients suspended in an edible substrate, agar-agar. Commonly used as a gelling agent, and a vegan alternative to animal-based gelatine, the agar-agar helps bind the ingredients into the crayon shape. Once the crayon’s been cast, they can easily be shaved over food, flavoring it in an absolutely engaging and exciting way!

The gastronomic crayon sticks come in a variety of flavors – both sweet and savory. Perfect for seasoning your dish with, they add a touch of brightness without you needing to grate, shred, julienne herbs, grind peppercorns, or even prepare sauces, compotes, and vinaigrettes. The flavors include classics like basil, lemon, ginger, and shallot, to more exotic ingredients like porcini mushrooms or black garlic, and even interesting combos that include chilli and garlic, balsamic and figs, curry and turmeric, or honey and mustard. Perfect for upgrading your dishes, the creators recommend adding 5-10 shavings on top of your food. It’s an incredibly fun way to make food taste better, and the crayons barely occupy space on your kitchen spice rack!

All the flavors are plant-based, gluten-free, and vegan (barring the honey mustard). You could buy individual crayons, or create your own box-set of colors/flavors to choose from. Food Crayon even sells a neat little sharpener to do the trick, so you don’t have to borrow one from your kid’s stationery set.

Ultimately, the same way a crayon adds a dash of vibrancy to a blank paper, the Food Crayons bring about vibrancy to your regular meals or drinks, giving them a zing or a pep that’s difficult to miss. Yes, I said drinks, because the company just released a Piña Colada-flavored crayon too! Don’t judge me if I directly chomp right into that one…

Designer: Food Crayon

The Apple Pencil’s little brother

logitech_crayon_1

Unveiled at Apple’s education event, Logitech’s new iPad stylus is meant to be used in schools. Very aptly named the Crayon (being indicative of the fact that it’s for the younger school-going generation as opposed to the Apple Pencil, meant for professionals), the stylus is colorful, sleek, and plays the perfect little sibling to the Apple Pencil.

The Logitech Crayon comes along with Apple’s announcement to build more school-friendly iPads. The Crayon works with all new iPads (except the Pro), and is meant for students to take notes. It doesn’t need pairing as the Apple Pencil does, which means a teacher with a Crayon could also go around checking and correcting notes on different iPads with the same Crayon.

The Crayon doesn’t come with pressure sensitivity, which makes sense because it isn’t for artists, but does angle-sensing and palm-rejection rather well. Where it truly beats the Apple Pencil (aside from the fact that it doesn’t need pairing) is in the fact that it comes with an on-off button (allowing you to use it only when you need it) and can last for up to 8 hours (perfect for a day of school) on a single charge. Unlike the Apple Pencil, the Crayon sports a lightning port at its base, allowing it to be charged via cable… a highly sensible move given how counter-productive and frustrating charging the Apple Pencil is. Lastly, it ditches the circular design for something more flat, making it not only easy to grip, but also less likely to roll off desks.

Built with a 3-year warranty and priced at $49 (half the price of the Apple Pencil), the Crayon will be only available as a part of the education bundle in schools and isn’t going to hit the retail shelves for regular consumers. *sadface*

Designer: Logitech

logitech_crayon_2

logitech_crayon_3

logitech_crayon_4

logitech_crayon_5

logitech_crayon_6

logitech_crayon_7

logitech_crayon_8

Crayola to Retire and Replace One Color from Its 24-color Box

Back in grade school, we judged how well off you were by the size of the box of crayons you brought to class. If you had that giant 64-color box with the built in sharpener, your family clearly was rolling in dough. If you brought the generic colors in an 8-box you were on the opposite end of the economic scale. These days, schools put the middle-of-the-road 24 color box on the required school supply list to make things more equal.

Now, Crayola has announced that it will be killing off one of the Crayons in the 24 count box. At first glance you might think perhaps the shitty white Crayon would get the axe, but that one is needed to make different shades of the other colors. It’s the only way you got gray back in the day unless your rich parents sprung for the 64-count box.

This is the same thing that Monopoly pulled when it retired the thimble. The announcement of the retired color and what color will replace it will come on March 31, also known as National Crayon Day (who knew?) My money’s on that ever so slightly different blue color in the top row.

[via Mashable]

Watch a Vase Get Made from 256 Crayons

There’s something so cool and soothing about seeing a melted brick of crayons being made into a vase on a lathe. The swirling colors as it turns, combined with the colorful bits of wax flying everywhere is just so cool. It is a great way that adults can still play with crayons. Plus it makes a huge mess, and what adult kid doesn’t love that?

crayon_vase_1zoom in


In fact it makes such a mess that you have to cover your floor, yourself, and all of your tools, because if you don’t, everything is going to be covered in colored wax. But you are going to have an awesome and colorful vase afterwards; one that will be waterproof even if it will melt on a super hot day, but who cares?

Check out Peter Brown’s messy and marvelous craft project in the clip below:

I’d like to try this myself one day.

[via Sploid]

More Awesomely Detailed Carved Crayons

Not too long ago we saw some carved crayons that looked like Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver. As cool as those were, they were no match for these new carved crayons from artist Hoang Tran from Wax Nostalgic.

crayon 1 620x549magnify

These tiny carved sculptures are so detailed they almost look like they are cast in plastic like an action figure. I particularly like Han Solo and the Beast from the Disney flick Beauty and the Beast is very detailed. The Joker crayon is really cool too.

crayon 3 300x250 crayon 4 300x250 crayon 5 300x250 crayon 6 300x250 crayon 7 300x250 crayon 2 300x250

Each of them is carved out of a real crayon of a color that matches their costume, and then carefully hand-painted to fill in the details.The carved crayons sell for $35 and up, and the artist also offers glass tubes to preserve and display them.

I wonder how long it takes to carve something like this.

[via Geyser of Awesome]

Crayon Bandolier for Kids: Dress Like Craybacca

So it might not be the best idea to make your little kids watch Rambo, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to dress like a commando. With the Crayon Bandolier, your youngun will be a young gun, toting around their colorful ammo.

crayon bandolier

Instead of bullets, this bandolier holds up to 24 crayons – for making art, not war. Perfect for members of the Crayola cartel, the Crayon Bandolier sells for $24.99(USD) over at ThinkGeek - including 24 crayons, including that oh so useful white one.

Griffin and Crayola Launch New Silly Face Swap Apps for IOS


My daughter really likes to play with my iPad a lot. She also really likes art and coloring. The problem is she leaves her crayons, markers and coloring books lying on the floor. Griffin and Crayola...