I'm melting. . . .

So lately there has been a melted crayon art craze on Pinterest. Or at least I've been crazed about it, because I think it's really cool. I've tried several now and here is what I've learned: I need to keep practicing. Not as easy as I thought it would be. I've tried the glue gun, hair dryer and oven methods. Glue gun method is probably my fave, has the most texture of all the methods, lots of overlap, pretty fun. I'm looking forward to trying the rain picture using that method. The hair dryer I had M try with me - made a few mistakes, I think. I peeled the crayons and super glued them onto the canvas. Once the crayons started melting they fell off the canvas. Fail. The effect was pretty cool before they fell off - the colors blended together and went a little crazier with the force of the hair dryer, which was fun. So if I try that method again, I'll leave the paper on - hopefully the crayons will stay on with the super glue that way. We'll see. The oven melting method was pretty straightforward and simple. I left the wrappers on the crayons and glued them to the canvas then placed in the oven at an angle - the crayons melted/dripped straight down which I liked the look of. The thing I learned with that: I had taped a heart on the canvas so that the crayons wouldn't melt over it, I wanted to have a heart void left on the canvs, thought it would look cool with crayon melted around it. But I don't like how the crayon melted around it and pooled at the bottom. Next time I would just try to add the heart later (I added a felt heart, which would have gone on top of the melted crayon just fine). So I might try that one again too. Good thing crayons aren't too terribly expensive :-P

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<3 <3 Our Valentine's Mantel <3 <3

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Oven Method - Oven was set to about 225 - I have big glass beer mugs behind the canvases to keep them upright (and the canvases are on a cookie sheet lined with foil) First pic was just entering the oven, second pic is about 5 minutes in, third pic is about 10ish minutes in - would have looked REALLY cool without the hearts :-/

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The first method I tried (and loved) - glue gun method. I bought a mini glue gun, had to remove the back part of the gun where it pushes the glue in (where the glue goes in, part of what pushes the glue through) because the crayons wouldn't fit through. Peeled the crayons to put them through. Not sure how many crayons I used, maybe 10ish?

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The Hair Dryer Method (the worst failure, my bad) - I peeled the crayons - shouldn't have done that. It was looking kind of cool (kind of crazy too) - but then the crayons fell off and that was that.

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Hopefully I'll have some wonderful, beautiful versions to show you in the not too distant future :)