A Walk in the Rain

Unfortunately not literally. There is no rain to walk in, here in drought-stricken Arkansas!

Figuratively speaking. Being the crafty (almost) person that I am, I have seen tons of crayon-melting art/tutorials. While I liked the burst of color that the rainbow ones offered, I had a special place in my heart for the ones that went one step further. I loved the artworks that used the crayons for a specific reason. My favorite was one that used blue tones to create a beautiful rainy scene out of the melting wax.

I've always wanted to try and create my own work of art out of crayons. Yesterday I set out to make that dream a reality. I found a small canvas I had bought a month ago for three dollars, and pulled out a huge bag of half-used crayons. I was able to pull out enough blue out of this bag of mystery to line the top of my canvas.

Because I lack artistic ability, as mentioned before, I printed out a silhouette of a couple standing underneath an umbrella. Cutting it out, I mod-podged (yes, it is a verb!) it onto the canvas.

Now, a lot of melted crayon artwork has a nice little line of crayons, with labels proudly showing. However the gently used crayons I found had messy, half-torn off covers on them. Also, my mother had labeled them years ago. So I decided to tear off all the labels to try and maintain some sense of uniform-ness. 

I tried to just tear the crayon labels off by hand but after spending what felt like hoursss on that, I made use of a tip I had saw online. I used my x-acto knife and just sliced those babies off! It went a lot quicker after that.

 Enter, the glue gun of death. Probably older than me, this glue gun reached dangerous temperatures insanely quickly. I somehow managed not to burn myself while I glued the crayons onto the top of the canvas.

 

Then I headed outdoors, just in case of flying wax. Now, most people use hair dyers to melt the crayons. I read lots of horror stories-- oh it took almost three hours just for them to melt!-- online so I decided to improvise. My mother makes cards, and had the coolest little gadget; the heat ray gun of death. I don't have a picture of it, but it's a small little tube-like object that blasts out heat like you wouldn't believe. 

                            

This heat ray gun of death caused the crayons to melt with seconds of me turning it own. It was crazy how fast they would melt. I tilted the canvas this way and that, experimenting with the dripping wax. I used a plastic knife to help direct the melting crayons. A couple of times the crayons got so hot that they slipped from their hold and slid down the canvas. To remedy this I laid the canvas flat and directed the heat right on top the crayons to help melt them in place.

And volia! The final result :) It didn't turn out like I had imagined it, but still, I like it. Not only is it romantic and blue it was also cheap to make and a beautiful (in my mind) work of art!