I’m really excited to share this post with you! Like so many of the things we make here, I had no idea how this would turn out until the very end of the process. I’d been thinking about making some art with melted crayons for a few days, but I wasn’t exactly sure what we’d make, or even how we we’d do it. Then, looking through a cupboard yesterday, I came across our family’s “Starry Night” jigsaw puzzle, and my plan came together.
This project provided me with a opportunity to introduce a little culture into our day. I showed the hooligans the painting on the front of the puzzle box, and we talked about Van Gogh, and examined the scene, the colours and the style of painting, and we listened to Don McLean’s version of the song “Starry Night” a couple of times. Then we got busy…
Each hooligan was given a piece of cardboard (cereal box) covered with aluminum foil, and I filled a paint pallet with 4 shades of blue paint, and a shot each of yellow, black, purple and white.
Some covered their canvases completely with paint, while some made only a few strokes. There’s no right or wrong way to do this. Allow your little one to decide when he or she is satisfied with their work.
We left our paintings to dry overnight, and we transformed them with the finishing touch today. You won’t believe how easy this was!
You’re going to put your broken crayons to good use here, and grate them up!
Older children will be able to grate their crayons themselves, but the hooligans gave it a try, and it wasn’t an easy task, so to avoid having to deal with shredded knuckles and fingertips, we agreed that I would do the grating. I made piles of blue, purple, yellow, white and black crayon shavings for each of them. 
Sprinkle your crayon shavings all over your painting, leaving some space around the edges so they don’t run off the cardboard as they melt. At this point, ours looked something like this:
Now just pop your painting in the oven for 5 minutes at 200 degrees. You can place it on a baking sheet or directly on the oven rack.
When you take your painting out of the oven, be sure to keep it level because your wax will be very hot and runny for a minute or two.
Watching the wax cool was really neat. Initially, the colours are still kind of pooling and running together, but within seconds, they start to firm up and harden.
When ours were completely cool they looked like this!
Aren’t they gorgeous?
Take care not to bend your painting or your wax will crack. If this happens, don’t worry, you can just pop it back into the oven and melt it again.
I finished ours off by punching a couple of holes in the top of each painting, and adding a dark blue piece of yarn so the hooligans can hang their masterpieces at home.
These are definitely something you and your child will want to display proudly!
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Wonderful, great job, I knew it was crayons lol…could you use a heat gun used in cardmaking. I have also seen crayons placed in a row and stuck to a canvas at the top and then blow dried with a hot setting and it all runs down the canvas. You could use cereal boxes as well I would imagine.
Thanks, Yvonne! I’ve seen the ones with the crayons across the top. Those are so neat! I’d love to try that one day. I’m not sure about the heat gun – I’ve never used one. It’s worth a try if you have one though!
ooooh cool!
Oh my goodness, those turned out so cool! We’ll have to give it a try.
Glad you liked them, Laura. Yes, you have to try them out. It’s such a neat process. Have fun!
I think we will try this with valentines colors, thank you for sharing!
I’m planning to do the same, Amy! Won’t that be gorgeous?
these are beautiful. I might try it with glitter in the mix too.
Silver would be pretty for a night sky. 
Let me know how it works with glitter, Katherine! You know how I feel about the stuff. lol
What a fantastic effect. I can’t wait to see the Valentines colours!
Thanks for idea how do this art better, because we tried to heat crayons with a hairdryer, but it was not work. The crayons flew away! Now we will try your way!:)
Glad to help, Inese! Have fun with it!
I LOVE it! Now I have to go digging around for old crayons to grate up!
Lovely job by the Hooligans! We love melting crayons so I bet they had a blast!
Jackie, they are gorgeous!
These are gorgeous!
Hit submit too quick! I’d love for you to come link these up at Mom’s Library! Have a great day!
http://lifewithmoorebabies.blogspot.com/2013/01/moms-library-3-for-me.html
You and your hooligans are really fantastic, you are creating great artists!!We`ll try it this weekend, I think it´s going to rain a lot in Madrid.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Maria. Have fun with this!
hi- love the idea!! but i was wondering- I read some of the comments but not all so I apologize if this is repeated. Do you think using real artists canvas would be possible? I would love to have something a little bit more substantial and permanent.
Thanks for sharing!!
Martha
I have no idea, but it can’t hurt to give it a try, Martha.
OOO so cool. I found this from the imagination tree linkup. We have a plastic grater which I think the kids can handle. trying soon.
What a neat idea! I also like doing this in the oven vs. a hair dryer. Thanks for sharing.
I don’t think I’d want to use a hair dryer for this one. I’m thinking crayon shavings would be EVERYwhere! LOL
I have never seen this technique before. The results are stunning. Excited thinking about all the color combos you can do. Pinning now!
These are gorgeous! This is bookmarked for when my hooligans are a little older!!!
What about a blow dryer ? Love this
I wouldn’t try a blow dryer, Wendy. The crayon shavings would be everywhere as soon as you pointed the dryer at them.
Love these! I was just picking up broken crayons up off the floor…this would be great!
Thanks!
Thanks for the inspiration! we have a collection of broken crayons I was going to melt down. This looks like a great use for them
Those came out cool. We just made an art project with cheese-grated crayons this past weekend too! Can you believe how many broken crayons one accumulates? Gah. http://mommyswishlist.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-to-make-crayon-cloisonne-kids-art.html
SUPER BEAUTIFULLY and wonderful. What a fantastic bit of art. LOVE Starry Night and your artwork and method is just fantastic.
Thanks for joining in with Kids Get Arty.
Maggy
Very cool! Like some of your other commenters I think we’ll have to do this for Valentine’s Day.
Just did this. I would recommend one of those cheap plastic pencil sharpeners instead of a grater. We tried the grater and it was very messy. LOL. But the sharpener worked great!!!
That’s a brilliant idea, Amy!
oh wow…thats awesome. many pay lots of money for abstract art like that!
Very cool! I love how these turned out! And Starry Night is one of my favorite paintings, too.
Did you paint on the aluminum foil?
Yes we painted on the foil first with acrylic craft paints.
Thank you:) I love this. We are going to do it next week!
I love this idea. I think we’ll head outside and see the real bright Texas stars then head inside the next day and try this out. Very creative!
Great one! I love the way the crayons look. Thanks for sharing at Mom’s Library! Pinned.
Love it! Will try that with the kiddos for sure! (My son has a big print of Starry Night in his room, so this is near and dear to our hearts!)
Still love this! Just stopping by to let you know I will be featuring it this week on Mom’s Library! Hope you stop by again!
http://www.lifewithmoorebabies.blogspot.com
Gorgeous! These are beautiful!
This is just magnificent. We love melted crayon art, and I really love the way you introduced Van Gogh to them. I am going to have to do this with my older boys. My five year old is especially obsessed with melted crayon art, and I think he will absolutely be thrilled.
I will be featuring this tomorrow on The Sunday Showcase.
This looks spectacular! What a very cool idea.
So glad you all loved this one. I think this will go down as one of my all time favourites! We’ve done another one since the Starry Night project! Can’t wait for you to see it! It will be live on the CBC kids’ website on Feb.13th!
I did this with my 23m old yesterday! We did a little bit of modification though and I wanted to share it with you! I was out of paints so we did a construction paper collage on the cardboard which turned out great. The other thing I did differently was breaking up the crayons by putting them in a bag and hitting them with a rolling pin. It was a lot less work and still made them into tiny pieces. You’re so inspiring and we use ideas from your blog often! Thank you so much and keep it up!
Great ideas! I love it when we’re inspired by something we’ve seen, but we tweak it so it works with what we have on hand. Smart thinking to use the rolling pin for breaking up your crayons!
I love this idea — our school celebrates one artist a month. Without an oven, we’ll have to lay them outside on a sunny day but I can’t wait to try it this summer!
Did this today! Kids and I loved it. They are now hanging on our wall. I picked up some cheap black frames and they were so proud to see them hanging up so nicely. Thanks for the idea and the great tutorial… (A big canvas print of Starry Night hangs in my son’s room and is the inspiration for his room so this was close to our hearts and fun to explore ourselves.)