Melted Crayon Art

I know this isn't exactly food related or a recipe but thanks to all the blogs I regularly read and to my new pinterest account I have a feeling I might be posting more entries like this. Besides, Martha isn't just about recipes and cooking either - in fact she's one of the inspirations I've had to start getting into crafts more!

I've recently become addicted to a blog called Whatever, and as I was reading back through the entries (yes I managed to read all of them!) I found one about a project the blog owner, Meg Duerksen, had done with her kids called Melted Crayon Art. I'm not usually into crafts, but this one caught my eye with all the bright colours, and it seemed simple enough that even I could manage it! All you need for it is crayons in whatever colours you want, a canvas, a glue gun and a hair dryer. I managed to find everything quite easily - except for the crayons. I ended up going into four or five stores and they'd either have only one packet of crayons or none! Anyway, here's my attempt at Melted Crayon Art:

Start by glueing your crayons to the top of your canvas in the order you want them in.

Do this until they go right across the top of the canvas.

Turn your hair dryer on and hold close to the crayons until they start to melt.

It was really hard to get my hair dryer in the right position to get the colours to go straight down. There was a little bit of splattering to the side, although at this early stage it didn't matter too much.

And done! I'm really happy with how it turned out, but I think if I did it again I'd take out the darker colours and have more of the brighter colours. I also found a similar idea on a blog, Dilly Dally Art, where the creator cut out a letter (for the start of her daughter's names) using paper and placed it under the crayons in the centre of the canvas. After she'd melted the crayons she took the letter off, leaving a white letter amongst the melted crayon. It looked really effective and I'm hoping to try that in the future too.