First DIY Project: Crayola Melting Art

So these Crayola melting art can be found all over Pinterest and my niece has been dying to do one of these projects. Since she will be staying with me for about a week over the summer, I decided to do this with her. I haven't done an arts and craft project in years, so I didn't have any material to even began. Our first step was to make a trip to Hobby Lobby and ended up spending hours there going through each aisle (especially the 80-90% section - more on that later). Below is a list of what we ultimately got for this project:

Material List (from Hobby Lobby)
- High Temp Hot Glue Gun (I didn't own one) $2.99
- 50-pack of Glue Sticks $4.99
- 2-pack of Canvas $7.99
- A Box of 94 Crayola Crayons $8.99

When we got home, I immediately made my niece sort out all the crayons and had her begin by picking out all the colors she liked. Meanwhile, I looked for tutorials online and decided to use this blog's tutorial for this project - 52 Kitchen Adventures.

Next, we arranged how we wanted the crayons on the canvas. We ended up arranging them with the tips pointing down and every other crayon showing the Crayola logo.

Then it was time to glue the crayons onto the canvas. I first started putting the hot glue onto the crayon and then my mom suggested we put the hot glue directly onto the canvas. So, I glued while, my niece put down the crayon. I have to admit but my mom's suggestion got the job done faster.

 This is how it looked when we're done gluing the crayons onto the canvas.

I didn't want to make a mess in my house, so we decided to melt the crayons in my backyard. I set up a splash zone area and started melting away with a hair dryer (set on low). It took about a good hour to get the look we wanted. I wonder if a heat gun would work and since I don't have one I wouldn't know. I would imagine it to work the same minus the air.

Here is my niece's finished Crayola artwork. This was such an easy project and since every project will come out different, there's no pressure in making it perfect. My only advice is to use the left over crayons to do some test runs to see how your hair dryer will melt the crayons.