Okay, so I have seen a few of these online, and I wanted to give it a try myself. I posted this here for you guys, so you can learn from my trials and errors! :)
Things you'll need:
- a nice new box of crayons (I went with a box of 96)
- a canvas (mine is 16 x 20 inches, bought at Michael's for around $10)
- hot glue gun
- a blowdryer
Step 1: Sort out your crayons. I began by separating mine by color.
The top right pile is my "reject pile," I didn't want any browns in mine!
Step 2: Figure out how you want the color progression to go.
This step became complicated for me as I tried to have the color changes be gradual and blend. I ended up doing something like this (because I'm completely out of my mind).....
and then line them up against your canvas to get an idea of how many crayons you'll need.
Step 3: Now comes the fun of removing the wrappers! You don't have to remove them, if you don't want to, I have seen plenty of versions where the wrappers are left on. But if you like to make things more complicated (like me!) and take them off, you don't have to peel them all by hand. I read online that you can put them in a bucket of water and then the wrappers peel right off. However, I had already carefully lined mine up by color and I didn't want to lose that by putting them all into a bucket. So, instead, I used a box cutter to slice the wrappers off.
Most of the wrappers came right off. Most. Be warned that some of the wrappers seem to be glued on... and removing those one can be a struggle. Also, be careful not to use too much pressure and slice parts of the crayons off (I lost a few crayons this way).
Step 4: Start gluing the crayons on!
Also, be careful because the hot glue melts the crayons (obviously) so you have to get them on in place quickly.
Step 5: Now the real fun begins! I had read online that a blowdryer will cause the wax to splatter, and I was really hoping for a dripping effect, rather than a splattering. I decided to try using a diffuser on my blowdryer and it worked really well!
So I just held the blowdryer (on high heat) over each section for awhile. It takes a few minutes for the crayons to start "sweating," but once they start to melt, they really get going!
And that's it! What I really love about this is that there's really no "right way" to do this. I played around with moving the blowdryer to different areas of the crayon, and also melting the wax directly that had dripped down. I recommend doing this outside, if you can, because the crayons on the edges did end up splattering onto my balcony a bit. Good news is that you can scrape the wax right off (except for my carpet... which I'm still figuring out how to address... oops :/). I ended up melting the wax for a second time, the next day, and I think it gave it more of a textured effect. I also used a Q-tip to help fix the crayons at the top that had ran together too much for my liking.
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