Pinterest Crayon Art

If you are on pinterest, then I'm sure you have seen this or something like it a bazillion times by now. From the moment I saw it I knew I was going to make one for the playroom.

I gathered my supplies (crayons, canvas, glue gun, hair dryer) and got started.

I hot glued all my crayons on in a rainbow-ish order...

And then, I broke out the hair dryer. I gather my kids around for the show...and had no anticipation that it would take SO long! After 2 minutes, my almost 2yr old of course lost interest and ran off to something else. My almost 4yr old lasted about 15 minutes and then she got antsy too and was off to something more interesting. I envisioned this project with my kids, their little eyes in awe at the melting crayons... Instead, I was sitting by myself on the kitchen floor over a large piece of cardboard, holding a crayon canvas and a hair dryer for what felt like hours. 

First I didn't do it right - I didn't know there was a "right" way and none of the tutorials mentioned there was. Apparently I was supposed to just know this, so incase any of you are not experts at crayon melting I will share what I learned. First, do not put the hair dryer at an angle. This created splatter everywhere. I am ok with some of it, but I quickly realized that was the very messy way to proceed (turning the hair dryer on high vs. low makes this worse...I kind of knew that would happen but I was getting impatient). It also made the colors want to go off to the side and not straight down from the crayon. I figured this out quickly luckily. You want to aim it directly straight on at the crayon and hold it close...like pretty much ON the crayons.  Holding it this close will also make it go MUCH MUCH MUCH faster. I think I was 30 minutes in before I discovered this and it made a world of difference. The other thing, I originally focused on the crayon tip. Don't do that. Focus a little lower than center of the crayon - it really made things flow better. 

I had started on the right side of my board and by the time I got to the left side I had the system down. So much so that I decided to try going back to the starting side and re-melt some of the crayon to make it look better. Well, that was a great idea...except my hair dyer quit. You can see where there is a tiny bit of white space between the drips and crayons on the purple and part of the blue...this is what I was trying to fix. I thought it had over heated, but nope, the crayon melt project ended up being a bit more expensive and cost me a hair dryer. Oh well, we got a fun piece for the playroom out of it. I love how it turned out and the kids had that awe in their eyes I had been hoping for finally... once it was done. I will not likely be doing this project again, but I am really glad I did it once. How many dripping crayon art canvases do you need anyway?