Crayon Melting Art Project

I was perusing Pinterest while I waited on a video project to render around midnight one night and came across a piece I found to be quite interesting. I wanted to make it. It was melted crayon art where the melted crayon runs looked like flower stems. I got excited because I love melting things and all I needed to do it was a hair dryer. This piece would look way hotter than the stuff I did with melted crayons as a kid. I recall putting them in muffin tins and melting them together in the oven to make one big multi-colored crayon. Anyhoo, because I’m not good at giving specific directions, here’s the site I found that helped guide me through in case you want to make one for yourself. If you’re not into DIY, I can make one for you and charge you $50 or more like some people on Etsy (hard to believe, but I suppose art costs, haha). It does get pretty messy, so I guess you’re paying for clean up costs. I had to take a spatula to my floor when I was done. Here was my process:

I glued a row of crayons (greens, yellows, blues and then because I needed more crayons, browns) to a 16″ x 20″ canvas using some clear tacky glue. Since I get distracted so much and will work on a project partially, then do something else for a while and then move onto something else and then come back to what I was first doing, my crayons had about 24 hours to dry. I think all you need is 30-45 minutes to make sure they’re good and glued on there.

I took some time to enjoy the row of crayons as they were. They looked like little soldiers lined up. I had some fun with different camera angles because they’re so pretty!

A unique little detail (more for me than anyone else) is that I mixed old crayons with new ones. I found a box that actually had my brother’s name on it from when we were in elementary school, so I used those and then bought some new ones to fill out the rest of the project. So, I compared and contrasted some of the labels by putting them next to each other. When I was a kid, there was no “crayola.com” and the color names were only written in English. Now they put the Web site on the wrapper and you get the color name in three languages.

I finally decided to take the hair dryer to it. My design is a little wilder than some of the others I’ve seen. I got carried away blowing the wax all over the place and seeing what kinds of textures I could make with the hot air and melted wax. Just so you know, wax flies everywhere, so I do not recommend doing this on carpet. It’s awesome though.

After I let the wax dry a bit (it dries fast), I pushed my flowers through he canvas where I wanted them and fastened them on. I had a little bit of difficulty with this because some of the wax “stems” wanted to break when I pushed the brads through. I made it work though. You just have to be gentle, yet forceful.

Well, that’s it. If you pursue this project, happy melting!