I’m late jumping on the bandwagon for doing posts like these, but it was always my intention to start actually using my pin boards to get things done, instead of letting all those great ideas sit there. So here we are. I’m unsure of who the very first person was to do post this project, but HERE is where my pin came from.
After reading through the comments there, I was nervous to try this out because a couple people said theirs didn’t and it was a mess. But it worked and we had a total blast making it!
We used:
-2 boxes of the 64 count crayons and picked out the best colors ($2.64 each at Target)
-a 15” x 30” canvas from Joann ($8 and change half off at Joann)
-hot glue
-hair dryer
I lined my crayons up next to the canvas prior to gluing them on, so that I could center the crayons on the canvas. I also just lined them up with the very top. I like the look of the wrappers on the crayons. Some people prefer them to be unwrapped.
After moving the board outside, just in case we did end up with a mess, we got to work. We angled the board slightly on a chair.
My three kids and I just took turns with the blow dryer, waiting for the satisfying first drips of the crayons. I had the blow dryer set on low with high heat, so we didn’t splatter melted wax everywhere with a stronger blast. I also instructed the kids to not blow the air below the paper on the crayons so we didn’t lose the dripping effect by spraying wax other directions.
You can see in the picture below that the paper on the orange crayons gets darker and shiny. That means you are close to your first drips!
First drips! This is where it got really fun! Because we were using a low strength of blowing, even with the high heat it still took us a while to get to this point, but that might be because my kiddos were doing most of the work.
They loved choosing different colors to start melting.
Poppy chose the girly colors.
Eventually, the crayons got hot enough to drip steady streams and globs of crayon wax. The kids REALLY enjoyed that! A steady stream of melting was so fun to watch, and their persistence definitely paid off.
But my kids weren’t bored once the whole time. They loved every minute, from start to finish. I’d guess we were probably out there for at least 20 minutes melting the crayons.
My two favorite areas of mixed colors:
We could have melted it longer, but we liked the look of it here so we stopped.
So much fun! Seriously, I highly recommend this project with your kids. It now hangs in the ‘new’ toy room (which was very recently Poppy’s room, but we moved her bed into the boys’ room since she sleeps in there most nights anyway).
Which actually looks like this as we try and figure out how to arrange a toy room with dressers of clothes permanently in there.
I love that you posted a step-by-step process. I’ve been wanting to try this, but to be totally honest, I had no idea how to go about it (I would have ended up blowing wax all over the place)
We have three boys, so I was actually thinking of doing three smaller canvases, one with reds, one with blues and one with greens. (Maybe even a Batman inspired one with black and yellow…hmmmmm)
Anyway, thanks for pinning and doing. :)
That is really cute! My boys would love this, and might even stay occupied for the whole 20 minutes!
That looks so fun! I have been meaning to try it too. Maybe I will remember now!
Wow! Really cool! I see a new project in my future :D
ooh looks fun! I’ve had this on my list for months. Thanks for sharing, Yours turned out fabulously.
My daughter did this, but she used reds and pinks only – unfortunately it looks like someone was stabbed in front of the canvas since the entire canvas is red steaks!! Needless to say, that one did not make it onto her bedroom wall!
I’ve always wanted to try this too!! But I can’t think of where to put it. Your’s looks super cute!
I’ve wanted to try this for so long! Totally awesome!
A friend of mine did this and I have been meaning to try it out! We have plenty of crayons to use.
We did this about a year ago, it’s so awesome and bright! It looks great on our yellow wall! We flipped the canvas so the crayons are going upward, just for something different ^_^
http://www.max-california.com/2011/11/crayon-wall-explosion-tutorial.html
Glad to see someone else joining in on actually trying the ideas they pin. It is the whole reason I started my blog to keep an account of my Pinterest attempts…and more of course…nice work!
@Max of Max California…Love the idea of hanging the canvas so the melted crayons point up…now there is thinking outside of the box:D
Super FUN!! Love this idea!
I love how it turned out! And it’s so great that the kids got involved creating it. So fun.
I bet the kids had a blast!
Just made this for my step-son’s room and I love it! I wanted to try a random color spread but I’m too OCD and I find patterns in randomness so I ended up using the spectrum of the rainbow!
Looks very fun! I love the finished project.
Pinned it did it, oh how awesome to finally see someone using pinterest findings in a creative way. :-) Loved your photos from this project!