Pinterest Friday!

Today’s Pinterest Friday is sponsored by your childhood… crayons! When is the last time you used a crayon? Was it just the closest thing available when you wanted to write something down? Or did you color with a child recently?

I personally could not remember the last time I colored with crayons. When I babysat a month ago the girls wanted to use paints and makers… you know, the messy stuff is always better.

I have two projects today…

First project is the widely circulated...

 crayon canvas art.

I started with a canvas that I purchased at Goodwill and painted over with white house paint… nothing fancy here. 

I then spread out some painters tape and overlapped it into a square.

 After drawing out my design, I carefully peeled the tape off [I had stuck it temporarily to our kitchen table] and transferred the design to my canvas. 

Now comes the fun part… though long and somewhat tedious… melting the crayon into wax.

 I started with a handful of crayons [labels peeled off] and hot glued them to the corner of my canvas. Then I held the blow dryer over them for a very VERY long time.

 Next I tried using the “hot glue” method, where you stick the wax crayon INTO the glue gun. This method did not work for me, the glue gun [also from goodwill because I didn’t want to ruin the good one] did not dispense anything. Apparently the reason that this particular glue gun was at goodwill was because the previous owner jammed it up because absolutely nothing came out of the front. However because I had “lightly shoved” three crayons into the gun wax was coming out the back end… getting on my skin, and clothes.

 The last method that I tried was coloring with the crayon while the hair dryer was on… I would say that this is my favorite method, though probably not the best for children as there is a chance you could burn yourself. Through this method you have much more control then the first method and you can blend the colors almost like watercolors

Tips and Facts

• I wasn't a big fan of seeing the crayon sticks on the canvas so I spent a lot of time trying to melt it completely down…which takes a long time… but you can also peel off the crayon when it is hot and rub a little wax in, and then hover the dryer to make sure everything has blended, AND voilà… you don’t have the big chunks
• The hot gun method has worked for several people, and if you do try it, it has been mentioned that you should break off the “pusher” part of the glue gun so the crayons don’t get stuck… I am not convinced that this method cannot be done and would like to try again with another gun.
• The fun part of the coloring method is that you can draw and color like you did when you were a kid, and then just hover the dryer over the picture bit by bit and the wax will melt and run a little which is then safe for kids. However to get the really cool watery effect you will need to color AT THE SAME TIME.
• Make sure that you do this project in a "splatter area" as this is very messy if something goes wrong [which it has a 75% of going "wrong"] Also make sure you are not using a glue gun or hair dryer that you love... as no matter how hard you try something will happen and wax will end up on everything.

Second project with crayons is one I had never done before but have had several friends do…

 Melt old crayons and make new crayons.

Sounds simple right… well then you know there is a way for Marissa to mess it up J

Now most people who melt crayons to make new crayons just peel the labels, break in to chunks, mix and melt. I however wanted my new crayons to be in the same color family. So I made blue, yellow, and green… I did mix a red into a blue, and orange into yellow  but no “crazy every color of the rainbow” mixes.

I was actually quite proud of how easy it was… popping them in the oven on 350 for 2-5 minutes. Then it struck me how was I going to get the new crayons out. So before they completely cooled I took a knife and cut the edge just like you would with muffins…

Nice smooth side, how they are supposed to look like

Now here is where you can tell me if I did it right or wrong… should I have cut the edge? Would it have just popped out if I had not messed with it?

Either way, they actually didn’t stick to the pan and came out fairly easy, though not pretty on the one side.

Very rough jagged side.

And of course I had to try them out:

Grumpy Bear is my favorite CareBear...
colored completely with new crayons,
hence why he has a green arm/hearts are colored out of the lines

It was very interesting to color with a heart shaped crayon, I actually think if it was smooth all the way around it would be better because your hand is more relaxed holding this heart shape then a normal crayon. Also if it was smooth it would have been easier for me to color, because of the jagged edges on mine, I could not see if I was in the lines or not.

 So, what have you created this week?

 Want to see more crayon art or purchase some? Click here for an Etsy Search.