Busted Button

I am really excited that I am finally getting to this tutorial after MONTHS of procrastinating! I’m sure the ‘wow’ factor has come and gone for this nifty project, but I still wanted to share my own take on melted crayon art with you all. I’ll explain why it took so long for me to share it later in the tutorial. It’s kind of neat 😉

This was actually  one of my fave crafty ventures in recent years. I’m sure you’ve seen all this melted crayon art floating around on Pinterest, so it’s about time for us to make our own now, shall we?

The very first thing you want to do is figure out what order you want your crayons to be in, then organize them accordingly. I laid mine out then had to put them back in the box, because with 4 kids (including one particular 6 year old who eats a lot of crayons) running around, I don’t usually have time to do an entire project at once!

OKAY! Crayola needs to start organizing their crayons like this!!! Since I was four years old, It has bothered me that the crayons are packed in some random order that makes no sense. It doesn’t flow at all, and I’m not okay with it. So I reorganized. It. felt. so. good.

(Oh! My first time using periods improperly like that!)

Now, lay those puppies out on your canvas/canvases. To get this look, I needed two big boxes and one 24 pack of crayons. I used three 16×20″canvases because I am an over-acheiver needed a bigger piece of art to hang on the wall I was thinking of. Once you’ve got the crayons laid out in the order that you want them, you can start gluing!

Simply use a line of hot glue, and place the crayons in their rightful positions. I wanted to make sure the ‘Crayola’ side was visible on all of the crayons. That is only necessary if you are anal going for this specific look.

Once you have the crayons glued into position, you get to unleash the secret weapon:

Arm yourself with a hairdryer.

PAUSE! This photo is why it took me so long to post this tutorial- I knew I wanted to use it here, but since it’s a photo of me when I was 17, it was kind of hard to track down! My friend, Carmen took this photo 12 years ago (GASP!) and since then, she has kept up with her awesome photo-taking skills. You can see more of her work (and a retro-styled photo of a pregnant me-heehee) here.

ANYWAYS- prop up those canvases and point that hairdryer at the crayons. It takes a minute to start the ball rolling, but it is a really quick process after that. You might have to lie the canvas down, or move it around to ensure that the wax falls in a way you like.

Do a little bit of this and a little bit of that….

And before you know it you will have a waxy melted masterpiece! You’ll figure out pretty quick how to direct the hair dryer to get the results you want.

It suited my circus of a living room perfectly!

I think the pink middle portion looks like a shrimp head…and ever since I realized that, I can’t see anything else. Oh well, shrimps are pretty cool!

I wanted this art piece to reek of nostalgia, and it worked out pretty good, I’d say! It smelled like those summer days when me and my siblings would leave our crayons on the porch, only to find that they too had become little masterpieces.

This project was so fun and so easy! It would be such a great project to do with kids too.

Experiment with it! Google it! Here-I googled it for you. There are so many cool ideas for melted crayon art out there. Check out what my awesome friend, Erika did with hers:

She took the wrappers off the crayons (ohmagosh biggest pain in the buttocks ever until we discovered that slicing the wrapper lengthwise with a knife helped A LOT! Be careful if you do that…) and she used this awesome selection of colors, which gave it such a cool look. So neat! Hey- speaking of Erika, it was her birthday yesterday and I have been dying to share her art with the world:

Erika made this for me! She has such a cool style! This is an awesome piece done with ink. Check out that tree- there are literally thousands of dots that went into it! I applaud anyone who has the patience, focus, and talent to create something like this! You can check out her Facebook page for more art here. Happy B-Day Erika ❤

WELL NOW! I hope you are off to load up on crayons and canvases! And don’t forget about my auction for a great cause that is going on here. It ends on Wednesday night so get going!

Happy crayon-melting!

~Dot