Melted Crayon Art

While looking through our summer pictures I came across some pictures of fun activities we did while I was on maternity leave. I know everyone has seen this first one because it is all over pinterest now. At the time I did it wasn't; for once I was ahead on something! Basically I had each of the girls start with a blank canvas and a big box of crayons. They each selected enough crayons to go across the top of the canvas, and I hot glued the selections on in the order they wanted. Then I set them up on a foil lined cookie sheet to go in the oven for a bit. A lot of people used blow dryers exclusively for this, but I am too impatient for that. I decided starting them in the oven was the way to speed up the melting process. So in to the oven at 250 degrees. It didn't take but a minute or two for them to start melting either!

I took them out of the oven once a couple had melted nearly to (or over) the bottom of the canvas. Using the oven resulted in straight lines to the bottom of the canvas which wasn't exactly what I was wanting. Now that they were soft and melty I used the blow dryer.

We quickly found that using the blow dryer over the top of the crayons made them melt faster then using it in front of the crayons. It also made a bigger mess this way, but I'm impatient and wasn't worried about a little mess at the top of the crayons. If you are worried about wax dripping over the wrapper it is best to use the blow dryer in front of the crayons. Depending on the way you direct the blow dryer you can also affect which way the melted wax flows.

Since these were technically the girls projects they told me where to point the blow dryer and how long to leave it there. Once they decided they were finished we let them dry a bit while we found stuff to hang them on the wall. Since I used stretched canvas I could just hang them immediately with no frame. Here's the final result!