Crayon Art

I was aimlessly perusing pinterest just the other day (as you do) and stumbled upon crayon art. Now this was completely new to me but apparently not to a lot of other people. When I googled it, there were quite a few results showing various versions of the same thing. It looked so bright and colourful and vibrant it immediately spoke to me. I had been in dire need of a creative project and after a little research in to how this was done, I knew this was for me. It’s super easy to do. The results are great. . .and best of all it’s fun. My daughter is only 4 months old so way too young to help, but I imagine this would be something great to do with older children.

Here is how I created my crayon art.

For this, you will need:

• A canvas – I used a 20″ x 20″
• Crayons – I used 3 boxes of 24
• A glue gun
• A hair dryer

Begin by removing the colours you do not wish to include in your art. It’s totally up to you but I just wanted to use the colours of the rainbow so I got rid of the browns, greys, whites and blacks and then lay out the remaining crayons above the width of the canvas. This allowed me to arrange the crayons in an order I was happy with as well as being sure I had enough.

Next, I ran a thin line of glue along the length of the first crayon and set it in place. I decided I wanted the brand name ‘Crayola’ displayed in my art so made sure to glue the reverse side. I continued this step all the way along the width of the canvas. Having never worked with a glue gun before, I didn’t realise just how quickly you have to work. The glue cools and sets pretty fast so you can’t really dither during this process. I soon got the hang of this and got a good pace going.

I feel it’s worth noting/pointing out the obvious here that glue guns are very hot, so use with caution.  Children will need to be supervised or have to sit this step out whilst a parent takes over. We don’t want any nasty accidents after all.

Now comes the fun bit. . .melting. I set my hair dryer to the highest heat setting but low/medium blow setting so I had more control over the direction of the wax. It takes a little bit of trial-and-error to work out how close to the crayons you need to be, which direction is best etc but it is really dependant on your hair dryer and your vision. I did find it best to work on sections of colours as opposed to just running my hairdryer backer and forth over them all. I was shocked at just how quickly they melt. You’ll find they go shiny and then start to drip and before you know it you have a beautiful running stream of colour that trickles down the length of your canvas.

Something else worth noting, in choosing your work area, the key is location, location, location. I chose to work in the kitchen and placed black bin liners under and around my canvas. You could also use newspapers. I found the wax did splatter a little further than I’d planned, but the great thing about wax is it dries super quick and the tiled surfaces in my kitchen meant it easily scraped off or could be removed with warm water. I wouldn’t recommend doing this in an area with carpet or curtains near by.  

From start to finish this took me approx 90 minutes to do. I was really pleased with the end result and couldn’t believe just how easily it could be achieved. My lovely 3 year old niece Isabelle, is now proudly displaying this in her bedroom. Will you be giving this a try?

xx