Melted Crayon Art Tutorial

I'm big on Pinterest. Ever since I got hooked last July, I have seen many renditions of the popular melted crayon art. There is the classic rainbow, a rainy day version, a flower-stem one, and most recently a heart-shaped version. I've always wanted to try one myself, and so this weekend I finally got around to it!

This project cost me $11.56: 2 boxes of 64-pack Crayola crayons, and a 3-pack of white, 11' x 14' canvas boards. To do this project, you will need:

• 2 boxes of 64-pack crayons
• 2 11' x 14' canvases
• hot glue gun + glue
• blow dryer or [embossing] heat gun

This project took me a little over one hour; the part that took me the longest was putting all of the crayons in rainbow-betical order. I discovered that 3 side-by-side crayons equal about 1 inch, and so for an 11-inch-wide canvas, you could put 32 or 33 crayons. I used 32 per board, as I didn't want to risk melted crayon going over the canvas sides.

Instructions:

1. Put crayons in order of choice. I took out all of the flesh tones, and duplicated nearly all of the chosen crayons. I am left with a 64-crayon box of mostly skin tones, and so I will need to think of a project for them so they don't go to waste...
2. Use hot glue gun to adhere crayon to board. I put glue on a crayon, aligned the bottom to the edge of the canvas, and glued the crayon with the color name face up. I repeated this for each crayon until I reached the other end of the canvas. I recommend gluing the crayon sides uniformly (as I did with the color names face up), as this results in a more organized look.
3. Place canvas against a wall, on top of cardboard or other disposable material. Set the canvas at a nearly vertical angle--though you can adjust the angle to change dripping speed. The melted crayon should not spatter the wall behind the canvas, but you can tape some newspaper to the wall behind the canvas if you are concerned. The melted crayon wax will drip to the floor, so do make sure to place the canvas on top of something you can throw away, such as a piece of cardboard.
4. Heat crayons with heat gun/blow dryer until you are satisfied with results. Hold the heat gun around 2 or 3 inches away from crayons. Be aware of the angle you are holding the heat gun, as this could cause sideways splatter; I recommend holding at a downward angle. It will only take a minute or two before the crayons begin dripping, depending on how close you are holding the heat gun to the crayons. If the wax pools up too much toward the top of the canvas and you want the wax to drip down further to the bottom, then you can heat these pools of wax too, until you like the look you have. I also recommend melting the wax across gradually, by section--when you go over the entire board back and forth, the wax pools and hardens toward the top of the canvas more, instead of the bottom. The wax dries quickly, but you can always re-heat and melt a section if it pooled too thickly, with a 'chunky' look.

I was surprised to find that some of the crayons took longer to melt than others. It seemed like the lighter colors took less time to melt, while black by far took much longer to melt than all of the others. Overall, this is a fun project to do! The best part is when the colorful wax begins to drip--it's beautiful! You will definitely smell the melted crayons. If you have any questions about making melted crayon art, or have your own renditions to show off, please share!