Crayoohlala

Please hold while I continue to giggle about the title of this post.  Teehee.  Now, moving on.  There has been some wild craze in the crafting scene this year about these melty crayon things:

Go ahead, take a moment to ooh and aah at all the pretty colors.   It's exactly what I did.  I have to think that this gained such popularity for three simple reasons:

1. It requires precisely 2 supplies and 2 tools.
2. Everyone likes rainbows.  Everyone.  Especially crafty people. 
3. It's suuuuuuuuuuuuper easy!  I'm pretty sure that given a half-hour of instruction, my beta fish could pull this one off. 

So, since this is such a simple project, I happen to have loads of pictures of my first attempt, and it's the picture behind my blog title, here we go: My very first craft tutorial! 

What you need:

• box of crayons
• canvas
• hot glue gun
• blowdryer

The Nitty Gritty:

Before you start, you should just cover EVERYTHING IN THE ROOM with those throw-out ads from the newspaper.  The wax is gonna fly and the minute drops dry instantly leaving everything you own with rainbow freckles.

The box of crayons you need will be determined by the size of the canvas you're using.   I got ambitious and went all 16"x18" on my first try.  I bought a box of 96, pulled out all the black, white, gray, metallics, neons, and browns and still had quite a few leftovers.

I get asked often if you have to use Crayolas of if the off-brand crayons work.  I have to assume that any crayon would work but since the wrappers are heavily featured in the end result, I don't recommend buying one that has "Carls Crappy Crayons" or whatever written on them in an ugly package.   Also, it is theoretically possible to do this without the wrappers, but I haven't done it yet.  I think so much of the crayons melt that it would just become a colored wax painting.  You would lose the effect of the melted crayon, which is my favorite part.

I also got asked if this could be done with any type of glue.  Again, I would assume so, but then you have to wait overnight for it to dry.  I was reading the back of some glue in the store the other day (what?  that's normal.) and saw that it takes "at least 24 hours" to dry.  I'm a weekend warrior, folks.  I do not have 24 hours to wait for glue to dry.  Hot glue gun it is.

Procedure: (It makes me feel like I'm in lab)

Lay out all the crayons you intend to use.  Keep in mind, you don't have to make a rainbow, but I would advise you that when the melting begins the colors blur so if your colors are not near each other on the spectrum, you're gonna have a whole lot of brown melty blah.

Once you know where you want your crayons, start gluing them down.  Since you're probably a perfectionist like me, you want the labels all facing the same way; so only glue in sections of 5ish crayons at a time or the glue dries.

To repeat myself for your personal sanity and well being, this is your absolute last opportunity to cover all surfaces you don't want bespeckled.  On a similar note, never point the blowdrier toward yourself.  You should have seen the look on my roommate's face as she walked in my room to check on my project the instant after I took on 52,063 purple freckles.

Now, kick on that blowdrier and show those crayons what you're made of.  It takes a little while for the crayons to melt, but on a high heat setting at full blast you should see meltage within 30 seconds. 

When I tried to go straight across, the drip was drying about 2 inches down, then the crayons hardened right back up. You'll develop your own technique, but don't try to get them all to melt at one time, stick to a range of 5-8 crayons.  For best results, make several passes over each section.

Keep going 'til you have something you like, but know when to stop. Too much melting and you're going to get brown goo.  Consider yourself warned.  Now you might have something like this:

I'd love to see how yours turned out, so whip out that cam and send me a link!

Here's how mine looked when I hung it on the wall!

If you learn anything about me in the coming blogs, you'll learn that I'm a one-upper.  Here's how I tried to one-up the standard "melting crayons on canvas rainbow" shindig:

This is how I took the pic, but it's hanging "upside down" of this on my wall.  You wanna one-up me?  I'd love to see your ideas (so I can try and one-up you back)!

I think I personally love this because as I've mentioned, I was terrible at drawing in elementary school (who am I kidding?  I still am) and it's like I was going to make these crayons into art whether they cooperated or not!  When I first saw this, I wanted to do it, but never thought of it when I had a canvas.  It's hard for me to contribute this craft to any one blog, because it is on so many, but I definitely did check this one out before I got started.

So here it is, my very first tutorial.  What do you think?

Update:  HOLY COW!  LOOK WHAT I JUST FOUND!  Sorry for the caps lock, but I was shouting in my head.  Check out this topical blast from my past:

YOU'RE WELCOME!