Crayon Art

So. I told you last week about how I was going to make the crayon rain thingy I had pinned forever ago. Well, here are (almost) the results!

First, I had to sort all the blue crayons out of the packaging. Soooo much fun. Let me tell YOU. I figured while I was at it, I'd sort ALL the crayons, so if I ever decided I wanted to make some crayon art again, I'd be good to go. Hopefully Future Mrs. Wilson will appreciate that. Because it sucked. 8P Oh, I included silver because I thought it'd be snazzy and shiny and fun. IT WAS.

Do you know what WASN'T fun? Getting the friggin paper off all the crayons. I finally thought of soaking them in water first. It took two soaks, because it was GLUED. I mean....GLUED. I don't know if it's easier to get paper off Crayola crayons, or if other bloggers don't complain as much as I do, but no one mentioned how much this step sucks.

I traced our wedding picture onto some tracing paper (ignore the red bit, it was previously-used tracing paper), then used a piece of foam from the crayon boxes wrapped in aluminum foil to outline the umbrella, and more aluminum foil to protect the area where our future bodies will be. Mr. T painted us in after I finished melting the crayons. It might've been easier to do the painting first, but then I'd have to wait and...I'm impatient. Plus, our former roommate was here, so they played Borderlands 2 all weekend. 8P

Alright, here is my setup. I taped plastic bags to the wall, in case I got any wax behind the canvas (I did). I used some sketch pad of Mr. T's (don't tell him) to protect the floor, and then more plastic bags because it was the same width as the canvas (smart move - got wax on them). I still got wax on the floor, but whatevs. I originally had the canvas too vertical, so the wax ran down too quickly and was super delicate. It curled up off of the canvas and was no bueno. I horizontal'd it a bit more, but couldn't go down too far because my plastic bags were up too high. It was partially due to laziness, but also I couldn't really stop once I got started because the crayons in the glue gun were fickle, fickle things.

Here it is after the first crayon. This made me very sad. I was like...oh-em-gee, this is going to take FOREVER. I was very glad I had decided to unwrap all the crayons. Things did get a little better once I tilted the canvas more, but it still took way more crayons that I was anticipating. Hindsight...if I do it again, I'll have it down almost flat to do this. LEARN FROM ME, CHILDREN.

And here it is with all the wax on it! Once I got in the groove things sped up. The trails are still too thin, and sometimes raise up a bit at the bottom. We're going to try to polyurethane it once we're all done. And then frame it so it stays nice and safe. This is the first piece of art for our gallery of looooove that's going in our bedroom!

And here it is after Mr. T painted us in!! Aren't we just precious? SO PRECIOUS. 8}

(image missing due to husband's extreme procrastination skills)

After looking back at the original...I have a lot more white in my canvas. I didn't look at theirs while I did mine. Again, mostly because once the wax started melting I didn't really have time to think. It's not like glue, that stays kind of thick. It pours out like...well, like melted wax. 8P I think it has to be the RoseArt crayons, though. I just double-checked their post and their canvas was pretty vertical, and their wax streaks were a lot thicker. Crayola must melt more slowly than RoseArt. Stupid cheap crayons.... But I like that I made it my own (totally on purpose, I swear), and it's not just a duplication of theirs.