DIY Wooden Blocks :: Melted Crayon on … WOOD!

The kids and I made these DIY wooden blocks yesterday.

We all agreed they are wonderful and want to make a whole bunch of them, both for the chance to make some more (they were a lot of fun!) and so we can have a set of artful building blocks for stacking towers and building castles.

I have my artist friend Meg to thank for these colorful wooden blocks!

She said she saw my post on melted crayon rocks and wanted to make some with her daughter. But instead of rocks, which she didn’t have, she used her plentiful supply of wood blocks. As soon as she told me about her melted crayon blocks, I had to try them!

Meg orders her wood blocks online (and we used three of hers), but you could probably also make your own from hardware store wood, find some at a craft store, or get this kind of wood that we use for easy wooden sculptures. In addition to the blocks, we tried this technique on some flat pieces of wood from Lowe’s.

How To Make DIY Wooden Blocks

MATERIALS

• Plain wooden blocks
• Crayons
• Liquid watercolor paint

INSTRUCTIONS

Step #1. Draw On Heated Wood

We put our wood pieces on a cookie sheet in a 350º F oven to heat up. Once the blocks were hot, we set them on the towel-protected table and we each drew on ours with crayons.

The crayon melted as we drew, just as it did with the melted crayon rocks, although not quite as dramatically just because the wood didn’t get as hot as the rocks did.

*Note :: While I didn’t feel that working with the hot rocks was safe for my two-year-old, she safely drew on the hot wooden block and wood pieces alongside Maia and me. The wood didn’t hold the heat like the rocks did and the risk of burning was much lower.

Step #2. Paint Over The Drawings

After we created our melted crayon drawings on the wood, we painted over the drawings with our liquid watercolors.

The watercolor resist worked great on the wood!

Here’s an art piece Maia made by tracing the grain of the wood with her melted crayon drawing.

(See how the watercolor pools a bit over the thick crayon lines? We used a paper towel to blot it off before it dried.)

Here’s one of Daphne’s artworks on wood…

…plus two more of Maia’s.

And here’s another view of our DIY wooden blocks.

We all LOVED this project!

We loved the melted crayon drawings (as always), loved the watercolor resist, loved working on wood, and really love our new DIY wooden blocks.

We plan to make lots of these colorful building blocks as soon as we can get our hands on some more plain wooden ones!

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