I follow DIY and art blogs religiously. I love looking at design trends and ideas, especially with recycled materials. Lately, I’ve noticed quite a few artists dabbling in “crayon art,” which consists of melting an assortment of arranged crayons on canvas. In their blog posts, these projects were described as “fun” and “easy” and “quick” and “kid-friendly.” What they neglected to include were words like “messy” and “tedious” and “teeth-grinding.” Let me walk you through the pain behind the rainbow.

1. You have to peel like 100 crayons. By hand.

Crayons are something like 90% wax with some food coloring [not a real fact] so the paper that surrounds them likes to stick. Luckily, I found that cutting along the paper with an exacto knife speeds up the process….but still, you are left picking off stubborn bits of paper from a pile of crayons. If you haven’t given up and/or cried by this point, I think it’s safe to see this project through to the end.

2. Glue guns are evil.

After all the crayons were peeled, I arranged them in rainbowetic [scientific term] on my canvas. Then I had to glue them down, one at a time. This would be fine, except glue guns leave strings…everywhere. And it’s best to pick them off if you don’t want them getting tangled in your artwork.
You’ve been warned.

3. “I’m melting….melting….” [the Wizard of Oz witch voice really helps at this point]

Time to start melting! I propped up my canvas and aimed a hair dryer at mid-crayon level.
Mind you, I have a cheapo hair dryer since I don’t use one on my hair much, so I had little
control of the air and like, which direction it went and stuff. Fortunately, it created some cool criss-cross action where the colors overlapped. It also got some splattered crayon on the wall, so if you ever try this consider doing it outside or tacking up paper. [Side note: dried waxy crayon comes off of most things easily, yay]

All done!

 
Okay, I admit…I kind of love this. Though I’m not sure I’ll be doing it again anytime soon…unless maybe you paid me. *wink

xoxo|z

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