Crayola Crayon Art

As I sit and use an exacto knife to cut away the protective covering on Crayola Crayons, my thoughts drift back to earlier days. Who doesn’t love crayons? I remember as a child, a new box of pretty, perfect point crayons was always a happy treat. Drawing and coloring made me so happy! It was an activity that could be compIeted with friends or all by myself. Friends had to follow my crayon rules...LOL. I was extremely careful not to break the crayon point and I dared not peel the paper off until I had colored away the crayon down to the paper. Then I only peeled away a small part of the paper at a time. Even when a crayon was accidentally broken, it was still used for creating art in the form of making candles with my dad. The art of coloring has entertained the world‘s children and adults for as long as I can remember. Times they are a changing, the world of crayons has expanded greatly. Sadly, the age of technology has robbed some children of the joy of a new box of crayons...oh, ok back to today.

For a while now, I have wanted to try the art of melting crayons. I found a used box of crayons at a thrift store. Perfect for my project, as it hurt my feelings to buy a new box of crayons for this activity of melting crayons.

Time: 30 Minutes Cost: $6 Difficulty: Easy

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1st

I gathered the materials needed: Crayola crayons, canvas, paper, contact paper and heat gun.

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2nd

I drew and cut out two sizes of hearts out of plain white paper.

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3rd

I decided to use the large heart. I traced around it with a Sharpie onto contact paper.

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4th

I cut the heart shape out of the contact paper

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5th

I peeled the protective backing off of the contact paper.

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6th

I attached the heart cut out of the contact paper onto the canvas to provide a heart shaped picture inside of the melted crayons.

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7th

I began choosing the colors I wanted in my art. I started peeling the paper away from the crayons. This was taking too much time. Here is where I used the exacto knife to carefully slice the protective paper away from the crayon for melting.

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8th

Melting the first crayon was a success, but the contact paper melted when the heat gun came in contact with it...dud...why didn’t I think about that?

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9th

I continued to melt the crayons and tried to be careful around the contact paper. You can see the contact paper is shrinking up as it melts.

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10th

I used a razor blade to scrape of the melted contact paper. In this picture, I had to reheat some othe contact paper to soften it so i could scrape it without doing damage to the canvas. i also used the razor blade to create a heart design where the contact was used.

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11th

I melted a light colored yellow crayon over the the space of the heart. I wanted the heart shape to stand out, since this is where I will write a message.

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I love the texture of the melted crayons. This was a fun project with many good memories!

Materials used for this project:

• Crayola Brand Crayons   (Thrift Store)
• Heat Gun   (Harbor Freight)
• Sharpie   (Hobby Loby)
• Canvas   (Hobby Lobby)
• Clear Contact Paper   (Hobby Lobby)
• Razor blade   (Dollar store)
• Exacto Knife   (Hobby Lobby)