I recently stumbled upon the world of melted crayon art. I guess it’s been circling the Internet for a while, but I’m late to the game, per usual. Basically, you use a hair dryer to melt crayons, turning elementary school coloring tools into paint.
Jack and I attempted this project the other day. He was thrilled with how the crayons transformed into “lava.”
After holding the hair dryer close to the crayons, the colors quickly started to cascade down the canvas.
While it looked cool at the beginning, the end result was a little disappointing — smeared colors and lumpy wax remnants soon started to flake off the canvas. I think we got a little overzealous with our melting. We hung it on the wall, but it didn’t last there long — we weren’t happy with the way it looked.
The next day we embarked on round two. Instead of letting the colors drip with reckless abandon, we held a few crayons in one hand, the hair dryer in another, and watched them splatter in a Jackson Pollock fashion over a piece of watercolor paper.
The result was much more delicate. and our color choices were more deliberate — selecting more vibrant and similarly flavored crayons. The crayons now resembled paint, and there were no lumps or flaking.
An IKEA frame provided a nice home.
We loved the result so much we made a second with different colors and hung both on the wall.
The crayons don’t get too hot that they would burn you, so this is a good project for kids age 3 and over. When the crayons melt you can also dab them on the paper and use them like paintbrushes.
The best part was that they dried in a matter of minutes and made very little mess, not something you can say with paint. We’ve got big plans for the rest of the box of crayons – holiday cards and wrapping paper are next on our list.
