For a more detailed tutorial you can check out the Melted Crayon Picture Frame tutorial. I also suggest practicing on a scrap piece of cardboard first before you attempt your final piece. Check out this tutorial for some inspiration for how to turn your practice piece into a fun conversation piece.
Supplies:
- Crayons
- Hot glue gun and glue
- Hairdryer
- Masking tape
- Scissors
- Clips (clothespins or chip clips)
- A strip of thick cardboard
- Tons of newspaper
- Board/canvas of some sort
- Optional: painter’s tape, paper, scissors, glue, Modge Podge, paint, and paintbrush
- Put newspaper down wherever you are planning to work. I found it best to work on the floor so I covered the floor and walls in the area. Make sure that there is an outlet nearby to plug the hairdryer into. Use tape to connect the newspaper together and secure it down as much as possible to avoid it blowing away.
- For my backboard, I cut a piece of thick cardboard and covered it with old book pages. You can also use a canvas or whatever other flat item you would like.
- Cut a strip of cardboard that is a little longer than the top of your board and hot glue the crayons to it so that they hang off the cardboard a little bit. I used unwrapped crayons for this one, but found that they kind of splatter everywhere. It is a little easier to control the drips when you keep them wrapped.
- Clip the cardboard strip to the top of your board and prop up against the wall.
- If you would like a section of your board not covered in wax, you can use painter’s tape to section of a piece.
- Begin to heat up the crayons with your hairdryer. It will take a while for them to heat up and some colors melt faster than others (yellow is notoriously slow). If you have an attachment for your hairdryer that focuses heat, it really helps. Once the crayons heat up, they will start melting fairly rapidly. Play around with the way they drip and splatter. Have fun and don’t be afraid to make a mess.
If you sectioned off a piece with painter’s tape, remove it and see how things went. Depending on how firmly your painters tape was pressed down, there may be a few splatters.
To fix this on mine, I just painted my design onto an extra book page and glued it on top of it. To make the design, I drew it out, painted it black, cut it out, and glued it onto the book page.
For a finishing touch, you can make your own frame as well. You can find the tutorial here. For this project, I used the same technique, but omitted the glass front.