DIY Crayon Art

These are being sold on Etsy for around sixty dollars a piece, but you can easily make them yourself. It’s cheaper and a lot more fun, plus you can cater them to the color schemes in your home instead of following the typical rainbow pattern. You can choose which crayons to use and melt them into different patterns and shapes. Try melting the crayons around objects like cookie cutters—or just paper cutouts to get the look you want.

You’ll need a canvas, a hot glue gun and glue stick, a hair dryer, lots of crayons (at least two boxes of 64 crayons, maybe more depending on the size of your canvas), and lots of newspaper to protect from splatters.

First pick the colors you want to use and line them up across the canvas.

Use a glue gun to make a line of glue down each crayon (if you want a certain part of the crayons to show be careful not to glue the wrong side) then press them down onto the canvas with the tips facing down.

Then line your floor with newspaper (the wax will splatter some—this will keep it from getting on your floor!) and stand the canvas up so the crayons are facing downwards and the wax will fall in the direction you want it to. It’s easiest to prop it up against something flat, like a wall. Just be sure to protect it from splatters.

Use the hair dryer (on low or high settings, you can alternate) to melt the wax by pointing it directly at the tips of the crayons until they begin to run. Then keep doing this until all of the colors are melted. You can go back over crayons that didn’t melt as well as you’d like, or that didn’t make it all the way to the bottom of the canvas.

And there you go! You have a piece of artwork that matches your space and your taste, and you made it yourself. All for under fifty dollars!