Melted Crayon Heart Art

Ever since I first saw all the cool melted crayon art work, I really wanted to make one.  However, it wouldn't really go in my girls' room, and the boys have plenty of wall art already; I don't have a play room to hang it in; and both of their teachers have enough of this kind of stuff - one's retiring this year, too.  So I never made any.  Now with Valentine's Day just around the corner, another idea popped into my head, what about a heart shaped melted crayon picture.  Yeah!! Now I have a reason to try this cool technique out.

This is what I came up with. Here it is displayed with the topiary ball I made here.  As I was forming this idea in my head, I decided to see if anyone else had come up with this idea and this is the only one I found. So I decided to give it a go and make a little tutorial while I was at it. That way you can all learn from my mistakes. :)

Supplies:
12x12 canvas

Glue gun
White paint - if you're a little messy like I was
Vinyl or contact paper
Crayons - lots of crayons depending on how you do it.
My vision was to do all pinks, reds, and purples.  However, as I got going and need a lot more crayons and I only bought 5 boxes, I decided to add in a little pop of turquoise, a little lime green, and yellow.  I also added a few brown crayons, thinking a nice brown stripe here and there would be cool and tie into my room.  BIG MISTAKE! Ummm, when crayons melt, they don't stay in straightish-lines. It kind of blended into everything else and wasn't quite the look I was going for.

Start by drawing/tracing a heart as big as you want onto your canvas.  (See the TIP below.)  Lay your crayons out to give you sort of an idea and to see how many crayons you'll need. This was when I realized I didn't have enough just pinks and reds and added the other colors.  Since my canvas was so small, I cut my crayons in a about half.

Then begins the fun job of tearing off all the wrappers.  At least Maddie decided to help me. (oh, and we had no school this day, that's why her hair is not even combed.)  Then start gluing.  Note:  I would have preferred to leave the wrappers on, I like that look, and it would have been soooo much easier to glue (hot glue + wax crayon = melting before you even get it on the canvas,) but I had two different brands of crayons. Also, if you leave the wrappers on you can tell what colors they are. Turquoise and purple start look a lot alike without wrappers.

Melting the crayons was fun.  Make sure you have newspapers covering a good area, because it does splatter a little.  I used my blow dryer on the highest setting; the other settings weren't hot enough.

I put my template back in the middle to hopefully keep the center clean from some of the crayons melting backwards.  It helped a little, but not enough.  TIP:  If you cut your center heart (template) out of vinyl or maybe even better, contact paper and lay that on first before you even glue the crayons on, I think it would keep the "back-melt" of the crayons from making such a mess.

See the mess I ended up with.  Not so great.  However, I found that some white paint was easy enough, although the big spot on the right took several coats, to cover it up with.  Plus if you're not real careful and you have a few stray crayon lines or flakes in the middle, the paint is great to cover all those up, too.

Final step, cut your saying out of vinyl or contact paper and stick to the middle.  Ta Da!!  A unique, but fun piece of art work for Valentine's day, or since mine didn't work so well with the pinks and reds, I think I might keep it up for a while longer.

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