Melting Crayons Art on Canvas + Watercolor Resist

We tried doing melted crayon art on canvas yesterday.

If you saw my Instagram pictures yesterday, you know that I initially planned to try out crayons in the hot glue gun, an idea I saw on Pinterest a while back.

This did not go so well, so we resorted to our standby of putting the objects in question (the canvas panels) into the oven to heat up and then drawing on them with crayons (which melted as they touched the hot surface).

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This worked beautifully!

Melting Crayons Art on Canvas

MATERIALS

• Canvas panels (you could also do this on watercolor paper or other sturdy paper, of course)
• Crayons
• Oven
• Liquid watercolor paint (or a watercolor paint palette)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Heat your canvas panels in the oven. We set ours on a baking sheet in a 350 degree F oven for about 5 minutes at a time.

2. Transfer your canvas panel to your work surface and draw on it with crayons. Press down and draw slowly, to give the crayons a chance to melt as you draw on the hot canvas.

When the canvas cools down and the crayon stops melting, pop the canvas back in the oven for a few minutes. Then continue drawing.

A Few Notes for Success

• We protected our work surface from stray crayon marks with paper. You don’t really need to put down a towel or anything to protect it from the heat (as we do with melted crayon rocks or other melting crayon art) because the canvas panels don’t get too hot.
• If you’re doing the melting crayon art on paper though, you’ll want to keep the paper on the hot cookie sheet so you’ll need to protect the table with a towel.
• The crayons pictured are these push-up crayons from Stubby Pencil Studio, which we love. Any crayons will work, though.

Here are some of our finished melted crayon canvases ::

Maia painted a nature scene with her melting crayons, filling in the entire canvas panel with a tree, an owl, and a flowering shrub.

I also filled my canvas with melting crayon doodles and designs, using lots of colors, lines, circles, dots, etc.

Daphne made her signature free form artwork and continued to ask to do another, then another. Here she’s telling me about her four artworks and who they are each for.

3. Paint over the melted crayon art with liquid watercolor paints for a watercolor resist.

I asked Daphne if she wanted to add paint to any of her canvas panels and she said YES!

In the photo above, she’s carefully painting in the areas of her art with the watercolors. I’m always a sucker for watercolor resist art but think that this version over the melted crayon on canvas is particularly beautiful.

Here’s the finished collection of our melting crayons artworks.

Oh, wait! What’s that one with the black dots in the lower left?

Melting Crayons Art with a Hot Glue Gun

We finally got the crayon that was stuck in the hot glue gun to come out. I had just left the glue gun on, hoping to eventually get the crayon melted and out and it eventually worked! Sort of. It came out little by little, for the most part, and was not exactly a smooth process.

But Maia has requested that we try it again with more colors, so who knows… Maybe we will.

The regular crayons are too big for our mini glue gun (one got stuck when I tried to force it to work) and we need to buy some more chunky crayons if we’re going to give it another try with the regular glue gun. (We only had one chunky crayon that I could find, which is why there’s a glue stick poking out the back of the glue gun in the picture—I needed to add it to get the crayon to go through.)

By the way, here’s the link to the original youtube video of the glue gun and melting crayons art idea that I had found via Pinterest.

More Melting Crayons Art Ideas

• Melted Crayon Art on Wood and Blocks
• Melted Crayon Rocks
• Melting Crayons Art with Watercolor Resist
• Melted Crayons on Salt Dough Ornaments
• Melting Crayons Easter Eggs

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