Pin Test: Crayon Art

There are millions of pins on Pinterest on melting crayons onto artist canvas, and this was intriguing.  But, there were a few things that I didn't like about this.  First, I didn't like that people used hair dryers to melt the crayons.  This seemed not only boring to stand there with a hair dryer pointed at crayons, but messy and hot.  Also, there didn't seem to be a way to direct the melting wax. It just basically splattered on the canvas.

Enter my brilliant idea:  Use the hot, humid, sunny weather we are experiencing here in New Hampshire to do the work.  I had several artist canvas left over from the canvas art we recently did, and Vera had recently broke ALL of her crayons into pieces.  My second brilliant thought was that she wouldn't care to use broken crayons, so I'd use these pieces up for my little project, while using this as an excuse to go to my local AC Moore to get a large box of crayons on sale.  As an aside, I learned that 2 year olds don't really care about broken crayons, and as a matter of fact, will go ahead and break all 64 of the new crayons without so much of a hiccup.  I, on the other hand, realized that I am the one who preferred the intact crayons in an array of 64 colors, as I watched in horror with each snap and attempt to save whatever might be left.

Shortly after Vera went down for a nap, I gathered my canvas, my broken crayons, and some tape.  As you can see here, I arranged them in the proper rainbow spectrum (thank you, Wikipedia, for refreshing my rainbow color order) and taped to the canvas.  I set them out on my deck, angled enough to allow the sun to hit it and get the melted crayons to drip down nicely on the canvas.

And I was playing with my macro setting, so here is a closer pic of the above:

 

 

Several hours later, in 90+ degree weather and direct sun, I had this:

 

Doesn't look much different, does it?  Ya, it didn't appear much different to me, except if you strained your eyes enough you might notice that the crayons were sweating.

After consulting with Kirsten, we felt the issue may be that I used washable crayons.  Perhaps there was something different in these crayons that was causing this lack of melting.  But for any of you familiar with the washable Crayola crayons, they are softer than the original crayons, so I made the assumption that they'd melt super quick.

Wrong.  And wrong again on day 2.  Seriously.  I thought maybe they just needed more time in the heat.  Ya, wrong again!  I left the entire thing in my garage, hoping that maybe almost 24 hours in a hot, humid environment would perhaps do the trick.

Day 3 gave me this:

Ok, I wasn't going to mess around with this "simple" project.  My solution?  I was going to smash these suckers to the canvas.  I took a baby spoon and started smooshing these crayons (which were very soft by this point) all over the canvas.

And, finally....I had something that was very salvageable!

I let it "cure" for a few days so that the crayon wax would harden.  Then I had the grand idea that I would add some Mod Podge Sparkle to it.  Nothing like a little bit of glitter, right?

Yes, a little glitter is good....

Let warn you now.... Sparkle Mod Podge does not appear to have a whole lot of sparkle when sitting in the container, or even as you practically pour the stuff on your project.  I mean, a good 1/2 inch of the stuff, when wet, barely twinkles!  So imagine my surprise when I woke the next morning after the Mod Podge application and saw that I practically killed a unicorn with all the glitter thrown on my rainbow.

Need a closer look?

Now the dilemma, what next?  I don't dare chuck this, as I worked for days on this damn thing.  I just don't know what the right thing would be.  I'm afraid.