Hi, I’m Lona — and Crayolona is where color, history, and curiosity meet.
 

What began during the early days of Covid as a simple return to coloring quickly turned into something deeper. When I rediscovered a box of “So Big” crayons from the mid-1980s — the very same kind I used in kindergarten — it felt less like nostalgia and more like opening an archive.
That moment sparked a question that has only grown since: how much history is hidden inside something as small as a crayon?

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Crayolona (Crayons + Lona = Crayolona!) is my ongoing effort to document, research, and preserve the story of Crayola — from product evolution and color retirements to packaging design and cultural impact. While crayons are often seen as simple childhood tools, they reflect shifts in language, marketing, education, manufacturing, and even social change. This site serves as a living research companion to my long-term goal of writing a comprehensive history of Crayola.

 

Today, Crayolona is where I share that lifelong love of color — from vintage Binney & Smith and Crayola finds to modern product reviews, research trips, collecting stories, and the occasional delightfully weird discovery from a thrift store shelf.

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Yes, this is me as a little kid in 1986! Like a lot of kids, I was a serious crayon-and-coloring-book user. My family couldn’t always splurge on the big 64-count Crayola box with the sharpener in the back, but I went through plenty of 16- and 24-count boxes — and clearly, the habit stuck.

 

At its heart, Crayolona is about taking everyday creativity seriously. It’s about recognizing that objects we grew up with deserve documentation. And it’s about building a careful, structured archive — one color, one box, one story at a time.

 

For the record, my favorite crayon color will always be Copper and my favorite retired color is Magic Mint, and I will never pass up a good antique store or thrift hunt.

 

If you’d like to follow along as this research project unfolds, you can find me sharing updates and discoveries on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and X!