Melted Crayon Canvas

Ever since I first saw the melted crayon canvas idea popping up on Pinterest this summer, I've been wanting to try making one with the kids. This weekend, I finally pulled out a big box of crayons and a plain canvas and set out with my youngest to make one.

Pretty cool, isn't it?  

Since Valentine's Day is right around the corner, 

we decided to incorporate a heart 

into our melted crayon canvas 

and we love how it turned out.  

Here's how we did it:

1.  I pulled out a big box of crayons and a blank 11x14" canvas.  Then I had my daughter choose the colors she wanted.  We lined them up across the top to make sure we had enough and they were in the order she wanted.

2.  Next, we gathered the rest of our supplies ~ a hot glue gun, a heat embossing gun ( a hair dryer would work too, it just might splatter a little bit more ) and some contact paper.

3.  Once we had the crayons arranged to our liking, I hot glued them in place across the top of the canvas.  After some debate, we decided to leave the wrappers on, although it would look cool with unwrapped crayons too.

4.  Next, we cut out a heart shape with the contact paper and positioned it where we wanted it on the canvas.  (NOTE: The contact paper worked well to do the resist, but started to lift up a bit because of the heat.  I may play around with different tapes to see if something else worked better so there's no bleeding under of the melted wax.)

UPDATE:  When I made some more canvases HERE, I ran a line of hot glue along the edge of the contact paper shape.  It really helped to minimize bleeding under of the melted wax.   Just try to keep your glue line as flat and flush with the canvas as possible, so the melting wax can still go over it and drip down on your canvas.

5.  Now that everything was in place, I put the canvas in a box to catch any drips and splattering wax and got my heat gun ready.

6.  Woohoo, time to melt those crayons.  My daughter got the biggest kick out of watching this step.  Because I wasn't really sure how hot the gun would be and how much the hot wax would splatter, I did this step myself.  However, with supervision, I know she could do it next time.

The wax started melting within seconds of holding the heat gun to them.  I first went across the top, melting each of the crayons a little bit.  Then went back, holding the heat gun to them a little longer to melt them more.  Finally, I moved the heat along the trails of melted crayon to get the melted wax going down to the bottom of the canvas.

7.  Before the wax hardened all the way, we peeled off the contact paper to reveal our heart.

She added the heart to a Valentine's card she made for the family.

8.  As I mentioned, the contact paper did lift up in a few places as I was melting the crayons around it, so I did have a little bit of bleeding in some spots.

9.  So, I grabbed some white acrylic paint and just neatened up the edges and put a light coat of white on the whole heart.

Looks much better now.

My daughter had the idea to maybe write in the word "LOVE" or "FAMILY" inside the heart and we might end up doing that eventually.  For now, we're just really proud of our colorful Valentine's Day artwork and really excited to try this technique again.

Sharing our colorful canvas at:

Brassy Apple 
Under the Table and Dreaming 
C.R.A.F.T. 
Skip to My Lou 
Craft-O-Maniac
Blue Cricket Design 
Sugar and Dots 
Make and Takes 
A Turtle's Life for Me 
Sun Scholars 
The Frugal Girls 
Ladybird Ln 
Design Dazzle 
Tatertots and jello 
Here Comes the Sun 
Six Sisters' Stuff 
Be Different, Act Normal 
I heart Naptime 
No Time for Flashcards