One Creative Housewife: Melted Crayon Art

Back to school sales are in full swing. This is one of my favorite shopping seasons. There are so many supplies you can stock up on to use throughout the year to help decorate your home. That's right I said decorate, and I am not just talking about all the brightly colored bedding they have out for college kids now.

The craft stores have bulk packs of canvases, paint brushes, and other art supplies on sale for all the art students going back to school. I usually pick up a few different sized packs of canvases and use them all year for projects around the house.

Another thing I always stock up on are crayons. There are so many projects besides coloring you can do with crayons. Melting crayons almost always ends in something neat.

I made these three crayon art pieces for our playroom.

Supplies:

Canvases (I used 16"x20")

Picture Frames (I used 16"x20" frames and removed the glass)

Crayons (I used Crayola)

Hot Glue Gun & Hot Glue Sticks

Heat Gun (I highly recommend using a heat gun and not a hair drier, because a hair drier will cause more splatter and you will get a messier look)

Cardstock (optional)
Glue Stick (optional)

Directions:

1. Place your canvas in your frame. Lay your crayons on your canvas in the order you want them. (This seems like a silly step, but it will help you determine how many to crayons to use. If you attach the crayons without the canvas in the frame you may end up placing the crayons where the frame overlaps the canvas.)

2. Using hot glue, glue the crayons to the canvas. (I recommend only gluing 1 or 2 at time, because if you run glue the entire length of the canvas it with harden before you can attach the crayons to it.)

3. Remove the canvas from the frame.

4. Stand the canvas against a wall, at a slant. This will allow the wax to run down the canvas and not just drip straight down without hitting the canvas. (Make sure to protect the surface under the canvas.)

5. Using a heat gun melt the crayons. You will be able to tell when the wax is going to run quickly and when to move your heat gun because the crayon wrapper will begin to look wet. I made several passes with the heat gun allowing the the wax that had run to set up a little before going back and melting it more. This allowed me to control the amount of blending at the top and allowed me to have some short and long wax runs. It also gave me layers of wax, which I think adds a neat texture to it.

6. After the crayons have cooled, you can break off any wax globs at the bottom and place the canvas back in its frame.

I made the two with flowers the same way as above. I just flipped them upside down when I was done.

I made the cardstock flower petals, by 2 different sized hearts using my Silhouette. I then folded all the hearts in half and glued the smaller hearts on the inside the larger hearts. Once I decided how I was going to arrange the hearts, I then attached them to the canvas with an Elmer's Glue Stick.