DIY Crayon Art

This year I moved up two grade levels and had to move classrooms.  During the summer, while perusing Pinterest and trying to make plans for how I would decorate my new classroom, I fell upon some super cute melted crayon art. I knew I had to make it for my classroom.  Without further ado, here it is!

I had a couple canvases in the basement that I had been saving to paint some art work for our bedroom.  I never got around to doing that and since we've decided to sell our house later this year, I figured I could re-purpose the canvases.  We've lived this long without art in the bedroom, what's a couple more months, right??  I googled "melted crayon art" and found even more ideas.  Some people peeled their crayons first.  This was not something I was prepared to do; mainly because peeling crayons sucks.

I got out the trusty glue gun and a couple more boxes of crayons that were left over from the crayon wreath project I also made last summer.  I lined the crayons up on the canvas in an order that I liked and started gluing away.  I omitted the gray, white, brown, and black crayons since I wanted it to be bright and colorful.

After the crayons were all glued on, I let it dry overnight.  I didn't want to risk having the hot glue heat up during the next process and have crayons falling off the canvas.  The next morning I taped up an old piece of painter's plastic above the mirror and placed the canvas on top of it.  I definitely did not want melted crayons splattering on our granite bathroom countertops!

I then got out my hair dryer and blasted the crayons at full speed, to soften them up.  This worked well, but the force of the dryer caused a couple of colors to splatter across the canvas.  Ruh row.
The effect was working well, though.

My hubby then mentioned that he had a heat gun.  Would I like to try it?  Yes, please!  Enter Ace Hardware's heat gun:

I used the low setting, since this is significantly hotter than a hair dryer and I did not want splatters all over the canvas.  I was surprised it worked much faster than my hair dryer.  I had to be careful of the plastic behind, though, since it liked to melt under the heat gun.  No melted plastic is allowed on our bathroom mirrors.  I guess that is an unwritten rule of my house.  :)

I love how the crayons melted all the way to the bottom, filling up the entire canvas.  The heat gun made it a quick project and I'm super happy with how it turned out.

Cost Breakdown:

• 3 boxes of crayons ($0.40 a piece at Walmart) - $1.20
• White Canvas (40% off at Michael's) - already owned
• Hot glue - already owned
• Hair dryer and Heat gun - already owned
• Plastic drop cloth - already owned

Total cost - $1.20 - Smokin' deal!!

Here it is in my classroom, covering up the ugly cord from my hanging paper lantern lamp.  The kids love it and always ask each other, "Did you know Mrs. Heinlein made that?"  Haha, it makes me smile that they are proud of my artistic abilities!

Do you have any Pinterest projects you are working on?  Maybe you have some other DIY art ideas that you've been dying to try.  Let me know!