Melted Wax

Like most folks that I know, I am a member and a fan of the website Pinterest.   I heard about this site a while back but was incredibly hesitant to join.  I was afraid it would suck me in and take away my time and thoughts from more important matters (aka children, mister etc.)

One day my friend came over and showed me her wedding board and talked about how it makes it easier for her to gather her ideas and not lose them.

That was all the convincing I needed.

So I joined up and I have found 

• SO MANY useful tips and ideas to help me on my never ending decluttering journey.
• Lots of fun crafts for me and the girls to do together
• Lots of ideas to make delicious and frugal meals
• 5 hundred thousand million home decorating ideas
• millions of different fun hair styles for Rhiannon and I to try out.
• etc. etc. etc.

One thing I noticed right away was the freakish crayon art craze that is going on right now.  Have you you heard of it?  Where you use your hair dryer to melt crayons for some crazy looking art?  I bet you have, because....... 

 Seriously. 

 EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER IS MAKING CRAYON ART!!!

I had to admit it looked like a TON of fun to make so I decided to jump on that bandwagon for a quick spell......

There were a few different ways to go about this, Rhiannon and I tried three.  Unfortunately I don't have pictures of one of my projects (they were Christmas presents) so I will only tell you about two today.

This is the one Rhiannon did.  She wanted to make a rainbow effect.  We started by picking out a canvas to glue our crayons on, I have quite a few of blank canvases that I painted black for when I was in school.  Now that the project is all said and done I am glad she chose the black over the white.  It made her colors pop more.

Rhiannon chose her colors and used hot glue to keep them in place.

So the next step is to use your hairdryer to melt the crayon wax however you want.  You see that "drop cloth"  I put up?  It didn't do any damn good, so if you are going to do this I suggest going into a garage.  We also found that it would melt and go about 2 inches and cool and harden.  We tried heating up the clumps but that only resorted in the clumps going down further instead of breaking up.  (This was a very dramatic moment in the making of this art piece.  Rhiannon was sure I ruined it.)  If you do this and are using a larger canvas I would suggest putting the hair dryer to the back instead of on the front of the crayon.  Also, we were going back and forth horizontily over the crayons.  I would go vertically on one color until you get it how you like and then move on to the next color. 

Here is the finished product.  This was kind of fun, but only kind of.  Rhiannon is 11 and this took about an hour and a half.  Around halfway through this she got really bored with it so this is definitely not a project to do with little ones.

The next one I did was a lot more fun for me.  I might have Rhiannon make one of these because the possibilities are endless on what you can do.  (I don't have a completely finished picture of this project, sorry.)

I started this piece out by drawing a cartoon interpretation of my friend.......(She doesn't really have knobby knees, that is just my bad drawing skills)  I used sharpies to color her in.

I then added some bling to her belt :)

And now for the fun part!

I started off by taping tin foil (all I had in the house) around the umbrella and girl so no wax would get on them.  I used my hot glue gun and pushed different blue crayons through it to create a rain effect.  I used the eraser end of a pencil to push the crayons through.  Also, you are going to need to take the wrapper off BEFORE putting it into the gun.  While the wax was still wet I sprinkled some blue glitter on top to give it a bit of a sparkle.  

This was what it looked like when I first took the tin foil off......

After this picture was taken I added a bunch more wax to the bottom half of the canvas.  I also added some more on top so it would look like it was "dripping" off of the umbrella, brightened the girl up and drew in some puddles at her feet.  

This project really was so much fun, and for those of you wondering, NO it will not ruin your hot glue gun.  It will, however make your glue turn into fun colors, so if you do an all white project after something like this I recommend getting a different gun.

I hope everyone is enjoying their week with this RIDICULOUSLY nice weather we are having!  Tomorrow is going to be all about one of my favorite things......FOOD!!!!