Feb 14, 2014

Craft Lab: Melting Crayons

Colored wax + heat = fun and easy art opportunities!

Today's project:  Melting Crayons
Supplies:
crayons (both broken and whole will work)
hair dryer
embossing gun (optional)
art canvases or unfinished wood objects
painter's tape (optional)

What we did:

There are so many different ways to mix up crayons and heat!  In this class, we tried out the hairdryer + hot-glued crayons + canvas method:


 (LOVE the color blending that happened with this one!)
 (and the crusty green edge that shows the wax build-up)
 It can get splattery, but the wax flecks are so small that they don't burn.
 Here, two sisters work side-by-side on their own projects.  One was hoping to get some of the green splattered onto her frame by the other.
 (it worked!)
 We tried masking off initials.  This first attempt didn't work because the tape wasn't sticky enough (not standard painter's tape).


 (but it still looked cool.  check out those wax puddles!)
The second method worked better (or maybe it was just stronger tape?)  For this method, she warmed up the surface and the tip of the crayon with a hairdryer and it melted just enough to be super bright and flowy and still give her lots of control over where the color went.


This artist chose to color the canvas first, then heat it up with the embossing gun and melt a layer of white crayon over the top of everything to blend it all together.

 Turned out great!
 With this method, she held the crayon above the wood and aimed the hairdryer directly onto the crayon, melting it.  Then, she rubbed the melted wax over the wood wherever she wanted it to go.


 I was so impressed with everyone's creativity and ingenuity!  No one got burned (I issued dire warnings at the beginning) and everyone really enjoyed exploring this medium and the many different techniques available.  Here are some more ways to melt crayons into art:

crayons fit in a hot glue gun (but will ruin it)!
making an "umbrella" to avoid all that dripping wax
melting crayon shavings with an iron
hot rocks + crayons





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