St. Patty's Day Melted Crayon Art

This St. Patty's Day Melted Crayon Art is one of my favorite projects to date!

But maybe not for the reason you'd guess.... Oh, it turned out beautifully, and I'm displaying it proudly.

What makes this Melted Crayon Art project a great St. Patrick's Day craft idea?

My favorite part of this melted crayon project is that my youngest daughter helped me create it. "Helped" doesn't really do her justice...it was more like I was her helper. It was inspiring to see her take the lead, problem solve, and brainstorm. It's a side of her that I don't get to see often, because it comes out at school and on the volleyball court.

Every time I look at our St. Patty's Day Melted Crayon Art, I think of the fun we had creating it!

And now, we'll share the how-to with you!

First things first! Gather your supplies.

Supplies Needed:

• 2-3 New Boxes of Crayola Crayons (Yes, they must be new and they must be Crayola Crayons)
• A Hair Dryer
• A Canvas in Your Chosen Size
• Hot Glue and a Hot Glue Gun
• Something to Cover Your Work Area (This is also a non-negotiable)
• Gold Card Stock
• Black Card Stock
• A Circle Punch or Gold Circle Stickers
• Self-Adhesive Pop Up Dots
• Template for a pot of gold coins
• Gold Glitter or Gold Glitter Glue
• Glue

One final warning: cover your workspace before you start this project! It's messy, which of course, is part of the fun, right?!

How to Create St. Patty's Day Melted Crayon Art

Place your canvas on your covered workspace (I'm nothing if not subtle :)), then lay your crayons out in rainbow order: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. ROYGBIV, remember?

We used a 16" x 20" canvas, so we had a large space to cover with our crayons. We also wanted a gradient quality to our melted wax, much like a real rainbow.

So, we laid the crayons out like this: Red, Violet Red, Scarlet, Red Orange, Yellow Orange (should have come after Orange, oops), Orange, Dandelion, Yellow, Yellow Green, Green Yellow, Green, Blue Green, Cerulean, Blue, Indigo, Blue Violet, Violet.

And then we were inspired to have a little fun photographing the crayons. I'll only share one of the many, I promise!

Once we'd had our fill of fun, we got back to business. We lined the crayons up in order along the top of the canvas.

Then realized we were going for a rainbow and this very straight line looked nothing like one.

I grabbed my trusty level and we started arranging the crayons in an arc.

Then it was time to hot glue the crayons to the canvas.

We decided that we wanted the color names to face up instead of the Crayola logo, so we ran a thin line of hot glue along the logo side of the crayon.

Then we placed it in the appropriate place on the canvas. We worked from the outside in just in case we had to readjust the spacing.

Also, the crayons should be sharp end down, like in the picture.

Then it was time for a little more fun!

I held the canvas at a 45 degree-ish angle and my daughter started melting crayons with the hair dryer. After a little trial and error (too much splatter), she held the air end of the hair dryer at the middle of the crayon and close to the canvas.

Too much splatter and not enough melting...

Just the right amount of splatter and melting...

After the crayon started melting and the wax started pooling, my daughter moved the hair dryer down to the pools of wax in order to push them further down the canvas. This was the really messy part as you can tell by looking at the sides of our cover.

And the floor.

But, shhhh, don't tell Hubs. I mostly covered the wax (which I couldn't get out of the carpet) with various furniture items.

Once we were happy with the melted wax design, we placed the canvas on the cover and let it cool for about 30 minutes.

While the wax cooled and set, we made the pot and the gold. My daughter punched circles out of gold card stock, then added touches of gold glitter. Sorry, no pictures of that part. I was too busy playing on my Silhouette!

I found a royalty-free cauldron image online and cut it out with my Silhouette Cameo. Not sure how to cut a jpeg with your Silhouette? This tutorial from Silhouette School was really helpful for me.

If you don't have a Silhouette, you could try a paper punch or create your own template and trace it onto your black cardstock (a white crayon works great in situations like this...and I know you have a few white crayons hanging around).

By the time our coins and pot were complete, the wax was set, so we started attaching our pot and gold!

First, we used self adhesive pop up dots to attach the pot then we glued gold dots behind it to look like the pot was filling up.

We used the pop up dots to attach the falling gold pieces to the canvas.

Finally, we found a place to put our work of art and added a few thoughtful details!

The DIY Rustic Shamrock Garland hanging above the melted crayon art is a quick and easy project.

The "Lucky" printable with ribbons and a penny is also a quick project that can be altered to fit the supplies you have on hand.

This melted crayon art project might seem a little complicated, but it's really very easy. And all you have to do is search "melted crayon art" on Pinterest to see the astounding variety of possibilities there are for this project!

If you love DIY wall art, you might also enjoy these projects:

• Macramé Wall Hanging
• Dried Flowers Shadow Box

Thanks to Jenny for allowing me to be a part of The Melrose Family team. I'm having so much fun! Hope you are, too!

Thanks so much for checking today's project out!