Just a short post for now while I work on another project. This is something I did a while ago for some cheap colorful and fun wall decor to brighten up my room. I got three boxes of these crayola crayons because I was planning on more crayon art. A bit of PVA glued them to a canvas in a heart shape, getting the shape right was probably the hardest part and laying out the crayons before gluing them is pretty much a must. To keep the inside of the heart white I used a bit of paper cut into the heart shape and some blu-tack as a barrier to block melted wax.
Once the crayons were glued it was pretty much just a matter of applying the heat. I borrowed a hairdryer and a spare pair of hands from my boyfriend and set to work. It took a bit of experimenting but we found that the best way was to tilt the canvas and focus on melting a small section of the heart at a time. It is best not to angle the hairdryer along the crayons as this can cause small drops of way to fly off the crayon ends instead of running smoothly, although this effect can be used to advantage as well. A small stick can be used to draw the wax into a line and encourage separate tracks to form along with using the air flow from the dryer to push the melted wax along the desired direction. Also note this is best done somewhere with plenty of mess protection as wax can get everywhere.
And this is the finished result. So bright and cheerful!
But I couldn't stop there. After a heart I had to see what else I could make. I have a bit of a thing for birds so came up with these.
I peeled the wrappers off some of my leftover crayons and used the trusty pocket knife to cut them down to more manageable sizes for the smaller canvasses and then to cut them in half lengthwise. I sharpened the ends as well just to help the crayon flow more smoothly as it melted. I also saved the shavings, more about that later. These crayon fragments were glued along the base of the wings and tail. It is worth noting that the wax will spread a lot so the crayon fragments don't need to be very long. I think the longest one was less than half the original crayon length. More blu-tack and, this time, insulation tape was used to mask the areas where I did not want wax. some wax managed to seep underneath the insulation tape, this was just carefully scraped off and painted white but in future I would use a blu-tack barrier around the entire shape.
Using the blade of the pocket knife to gently start tracks as before and applying heat at the low setting finished the wings and tails. For the bodies I wanted a mottled feather effect, remember those shavings I saved? I sprinkled those into the body and head of the birds (making sure there were no oversize chunks) and melted them. The first attempt was the red bird, I used the hairdryer to blow directly on the shavings and they just melted and ran together except for a few chunks of yellow which took longer to melt.
For the blue-green bird I decided to try a different approach and hold the canvas up high and level and use the hairdrier to heat the canvas beneath the shavings.I also made doubly sure the shavings were very fine. This took a surprisingly short time to melt and didn't disrupt the already formed wings and tail. I am really pleased with the result.
As I mentioned there was quite a bit of wax seeping away from the borders but a little white paint and a couple more layers of white paint and it is barely noticeable. I also used a orange pen to mark in a small beak for the blue bird. One now hangs on my wall and the other went to the boyfriend for all his help and design input. They seem to remind me of fire and water respectively... maybe a light blue/white and a brown/yellow one should follow.
Just for interests sake, the heart is on a 40x50cm canvas, and the birds are both on 15x15cm canvasses.
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