After watching my sister-in-law use StumbleUpon to pass the time (or avoid homework) I decided to check it out one night. I signed up, clicked "Stumble!" and started browsing the various crafty ideas that popped up on my computer screen. I saw some things I liked and clicked to add them to my favorites, only to bring up the sign-in screen again... which confused me. I re-signed up, and continued about my business, browsing the sites and getting more inspired with every click. It wasn't until the next time I went to the Stumble website that I realized I hadn't been stumbling at all - minus the initial one - and that I had inadvertently stumbled upon a different website: craftgawker... which explains all of the crafty, DIY sites I was seeing.
Anyways. I found some great crafty ideas that I wanted to try - especially now that my sister is pregnant, and I have reason to be crafty [think nursery room art, decorations, etc.].. also, being a teacher (almost), some of the ideas work as holiday crafts that kids can easily do. The first one I found was this melted crayon art, found here.
I wanted to make some artwork to display Baby Bru's name (gender yet to be known) so I decided to go shopping for some art supplies. I ended up with 2 boxes of 120-count crayons, 2 16x20 canvases, and a borrowed glue gun (thanks, mom-in-law!). I spent about $20 total, mainly because I was greedy with the crayons and wanted the special 120-count box.
I pulled out the turquoises, aquas, greens, and yellows, because I knew this was most likely the color scheme my sister was going to use for her nursery, and I wanted it to coordinate as much as possible. I laid out all of the crayons (I used 2 of each color) and then started the process of peeling off all of the wrappers. I pulled out my trusty x-acto knife from art class at Purdue, ran the blade down the edge of the wrapper and presto! Off it popped - sooo much easier than trying to sit there and pick off each one... especially with freshly painted nails.
After peeling off all of the wrappers, I grabbed my borrowed hot glue gun and began gluing them onto the canvas. I went straight across the top, using the edge of the canvas as a guide to help keep them straight... being a perfectionist, I knew this was going to be a tough task, and I ended up peeling off several of the crayons to fix them because it just wasn't good enough. In the end, it didn't come out perfectly straight but I had spent enough time gluing and was ready to start the melting process.
Aaaaand ready to melt...
I used my back-up hairdryer, which was a good call because my depth perception sucks and I hit the melting crayons with the tip of the dryer on more than a few occasions. I wasn't thrilled with my finished product - I like the concept, but the colors weren't rockin' it for me... and I didn't think they'd go well with the color scheme for the nursery. It ended up much too dark - I'd love to make one with just the really light aqua colors but I don't think my husband would appreciate me spending all that money on the 50 boxes of crayons I would need to make it happen...
My finished product (melted crayon art attempt #1):
So. Since I wasn't thrilled with the colors, I decided to use the leftover pinks and purples to create another one. I also went in a different direction layout-wise... I didn't want to spend all my time making the line perfectly straight so I zig-zagged them; I also thought it would be cool to have the drips going both ways, so I moved the line of crayons down a little...
I laid all of the crayons out on the canvas how I wanted them to look, and just removed a few crayons at a time to add glue. This became an issue when I got to the right side of the canvas - the pressure of adding the glue caused the canvas to angle down, causing the crayons that had yet to be glued to fall into the glue... and not the crayons I WANTED in the glue. It was annoying but I fought through and ended up with a satisfactory end result. I was tempted to just leave it the way it was - I kind of liked the look prior to the melting... but then I ran out of other things to do and decided to take on the melting process anyways. I could always easily redo it if I wanted. I set up the canvas and again started blasting the crayons with the hot air to melt them - a very intriguing process, I might add.
Here's my canvas half-done:
Wasn't thrilled with the big glob on the right, but what can you do - you can only control the melting wax so much. I love how the splatter caused overlap though - I wished that worked on the other half but you'll see later it didn't really.. I think there wasn't enough space to work with for the splatter to be effective in the manner I wanted it to be. =]
Final product (melted crayon art attempt #2):
I'm excited about how this one came out - much prettier than the first attempt, and I definitely like the zig-zag better than the straight. Now I'm really hoping my sister has a girl so I can give her this one. =] I think it would look neat hanging sideways, so the crayons were vertical instead of horizontal, especially if I could have gotten the splatter on both sides. I plan to try again in the future using greys and blacks so I can hang it up in our guest room - it's just going to take me awhile to collect the colors I need!
