Making Melted Wax Art

One of my favorite things to do in a spare half an hour or so, is to grab a hair dryer and a box of child’s crayons and create a truly beautiful piece of artwork!

This project is such a flexible one, which can be done for fun with the kids on a rainy day or done with hours in hand with time and thought to create a really breathtaking piece of artwork.

You will need:

*Hairdryer

*Mix of crayons (use left over bits or new ones)

*a canvass

Start off by spreading newspaper across the area (the first time I did this, our carpet, cat and walls ended up looking like an explosion in a paint factory, not recommended!)

Once you’ve done this choose your colors. For a more special piece, try and pick a palette of complementary colours. Alternatively, you could just go crazy and use a lot of everything.

Make sure you take all the paper covering off the crayons. This can be a bit fiddly, but try not to break the crayons.

Have an idea of the pattern you want to create in your head-lines or splodges? You could lightly sketch this out with pencil on the canvass as a guide.

Now you’re ready to go. Get the hairdryer and turn it on. Pick up your first crayon and hold in lenthways against the canvass. With your other hand, hold the hairdryer about 10cm away, heating it up. It will quickly begin to melt. You can use the crayon to guide the colour into areas you want. Lift the crayon away and direct the air so as to “push” the melted wax across the material, letting it flow and drip as desired.

Be careful! If you hold it too close it can splatter across the page. This can lead to great effects depending on what you want to create, but make sure you avoid your surroundings.

Carry on this technique in different areas, with different colours until you have the desired effect. Bare in mind, you can always re-heat an area to change it again. Experiment with texture too, by “roughing” up the wax, or adding more layers.

I love this more because its cheap, simple and the effects are beautiful. It also works on glass, and you can then gloss over to create a more permanent effect, see below!

And for those messy hands like mine, who don’t manage to avoid the carpet, heat the wax backup with the hairdryer and wash thoroughly immediately

 

xx