fabulous way to waste time and crayons (in a good way)

Have you seen the melted crayon art that has been circulating blog sites? They line up crayons in a rainbow color scheme and melt them down a canvas with a hair dryer to drip. I tried that this week and I got to admit it was a lot of fun however, I felt sort of guilty ruining crayons for that purpose. I used less than stellar crayons and I think in the future I'd likely only use crayola as any other brand is just not up to the task. 

So, after I made the project, I hung it on the wall and found the drips of crayons cracked immediately and fell to the floor and essentially ruing the project that I spent way too long on. 

I did something a little different. I had an extra canvas and left over crayons that didn't fit into the rainbow such as browns and silver and gold. I chopped up little pieces of the crayon and melted them down into little puddles with a heat gun for scrap-booking. The blowing air made the puddles dance and move to other directions and ended up making a interesting watercolor-esque type of style. It was extremely time consuming and still had the same problem with thick parts cracking and flaking. So that was the goal to make it so thin that it wouldn't break. My brand was crazy art crayons and they didn't melt well. It seemed it was separating and leaving particles behind. I thought, maybe I will try a crayola. I grabbed one out of my bucket I keep for the kids and HOLY COW! the pigments when melted were beautiful and solid and very vibrant and the way they moved on the canvas was more like butter than water. So I started making swirls and holding the crayon and using it while it was being melted and it was very much like an oil pastel or finger paint except much more pliable. At this point, I was so enthralled by the mixing of colors and how they reacted to each other I couldn't stop. I added silver which if you have ever colored, has always been the best crayon as it's softer than the other colors and it did amazing things with the crayon wax. 

Now I am not saying i came up with an amazing piece of artwork, I am saying it was fun and very relaxing. Cool thing too, the crayons aren't cracking on the canvas and as long as it stays away from the hot sun, I can have this a long time. 

Back to the rainbow drip piece, I ended up night liking it and so I melted away the crayon wax only to have it leave this watercolor effect. I don't like this piece. Likely, I will gather all the crayons and melt them down into crayon wafers and reuse the canvas. Although the left over wax will make it nearly impossible to use, But I will find something.