Crayon Drip Art

by Athram

12K15610

Intro: Crayon Drip Art

For this instructable you will need:

A canvas (Cardboard or similar will work as well)

Crayons, lots of them!

A glue gun

Cardboard and paper

A printer or drawing equipment

A heatgun or hairdryer

STEP 1: Step 1: Skin Those Crayons!

Make sure you have enough crayons to cover the top side of you canvas. Remove the paper casing from the crayons.

STEP 2: Step 2: Stick 'em Down

Stick the skinned crayons along the top of your canvas. I found it is easiest to put down a little bit of glue where you plan to stick the crayon and press it into it instead of applying the glue to the crayon first.

Warning - Glue guns are hot, be careful!

STEP 3: Step 3: Prepare the Picture

There are a couple of ways of going about this. You can draw a picture onto a piece of paper or print one off. Once you have a picture (it doesn't have to be silhouetted, that's just a personal preference), stick it onto a piece of cardboard with pritt stick glue or something similar. Carefully cut around the picture. Depending on how thick your cardboard is, you may need to stick the cut out onto another piece, you double the thickness.

Now, stick the picture onto the canvas with the glue gun. Make sure you glue around the whole of the picture, leaving no gaps, especially along the top side. This creates a seal between the picture and the canvas, so no wax can drip through.

Another tip is to cover the top side of the cardboard cut-out with tape, perpendicular to the picture itself. This will stop wax dripping through the holes in the cardboard.

STEP 4: Step Four: the Melting

This is the best part of the process, the melting. Put your heat gun/hair dryer on a high heat setting (and low-blow if you an). Heat the crayons until the wax starts to drip. You can guide the wax down the canvas to a certain extent, causing it to go in particular places or just allow it to flow freely, it's up to you.

When you are happy with the dripping patterns, gently remove the tape and give the area a quick heat to settle the wax into place.

Ta-da, your wax art is complete!

9 Comments

RamziS4 7 years ago

nice.. but I Wana mix it with string art like this one https://youtu.be/2i4dnYdIN7w

aszappanos 8 years ago

I love this and will try to make it when I have time. I wonder if I can make the ground under the couple as well and let puddles form.

Athram 8 years ago

Yay, thank you! That would be so cool, you could use crayons you didn't stick down to hold above the area under the couple and apply heat to them. That would let you drip the wax in more specific places.

aszappanos 8 years ago

Cool! I didn't even think of doing that, but your idea of melting and dripping it from the air sounds perfect for making puddles!

I was thinking of attaching something like a thick corrugated cardboard piece temporarily under their feet to go across the entire picture (or make it a permanent part of the image) that would stop the flow of the melted crayon rain from going below that line, and let the crayon flows spread out, mix and build up on that line. Maybe I could have the ground as part of the image. Hmmm. I will post pictures when I am done. Thank you for inspiring me!

Athram 8 years ago

I like that idea, it makes sense. When I removed the tape over the top of the cut out I found the edges of the wax that had touched it looked different to the others. They were more sharp where they had settled against the straight edge of the tape. I gave them a quick blast of heat to melt the edges a bit to make it look a bit more natural. If you take the cardboard off the bottom, you could try that to make the puddles look more puddley and rounded.

I can't wait to see it!

vpineta 8 years ago

If you want to look more professional, you can cut the back part from the pen and that part you can melt and after that put together

CurtosNoirDesign 8 years ago

Now that is a clever idea! I'm totally making one too.

Athram 8 years ago

Thanks! Post a picture when you do, I'd love to see it!