You melt my heart… Wax art!

So a few months back one of my fabulously creative teachers posted about this crayon melted art she stumbled upon. I though to myself it would be a great idea to try with the kids and in all the madness of everyday life I completely forgot about it, until… I stumbled upon it on Pintrest again. I had all the supplies necessary on hand to try this wonderful piece of art except the canvas. So this morning the kids and I headed off to Hobby Lobby and pick up a 16"x20" canvas for each of them.

I prepared the canvas by painting them in a metallic silver acrylic paint. Approximately 4 coats, letting each coat dry before the next.

While the coats dried I organized the crayons, in order (ROGBV) with white as the first, then grey and black at the end.

Then I used a hot glue gun to place the crayons to the canvas, with 'Crayola' facing up on all the crayons to give it a more unified look.

TIP: I glued one crayon at a time and placed the glue on the crayon so it didn't set too fast on the canvas.  If your using Crayolas then I suggest placing the glue along the color name so that 'Crayola' reads upright.

I then waited an hour to let the glue fully set before I handed my kids the blow dryer and let them go to town. It didn't take long for boredom to kick in with them but once the wax actually began to melt they were interested again! 

TIP: I would coat a generous amount of space on the workspace and wall behind the work space because the hot melting wax has a mind of its own and can go off the canvas. 

 

Our guard dog :D watching over the projects as they dry and we wait to add the kids names. 

 

The end results after we added the kids names and hung them. 

Materials:
16"x20" canvas
2- 24 packs of crayola crayons (minus the 4 brown)
5-7 glue sticks
glue gun
acrylic paint (something not in the box of crayons so all of the colors pop)
sponge brush


Some people choose to leave the canvas white but I thought with this art going into the kids starry night themed room it would add more interest with a silver background.This really made the colors pop off the canvas.

A rough estimate of the cost of producing this (assuming you have a glue gun and hair dryer on hand): Less than $15.00. If you watch during back to school season Toys R Us, Wal Mart and a few other stores have Crayola 24 pack crayons for just a quarter! And the rest of the supplies can be purchased at Hobby Lobby with a 40% off coupon. Making it a great fairly inexpensive project to do with the kids on a cold day like today!

Enjoy… feel free to ask any questions for things I may have left out.