Melted crayon art has taken Pinterest by storm, but not all crayon art is created equal. You need to have a good composition, not just throw some crayons on a canvas. But be not afraid! As an art teacher, I have a few tricks and tips for you to get the most beautiful results from your Crayolas.
I am OBSESSED with these colorful canvases. They just screams “art teacher!” I have made two so far. One for myself, pictured above, and one for an art teacher friend. They make great gifts! Do all the hard work of laying out and gluing the crayons, but let them do the fun stuff with the hairdryer.
What you will need:
One box of 96 Crayola Crayons – browns and grays removed
One 24″ x 18″ pre-stretched canvas
Hot Glue
Hair Dryer
Paint drop-cloth or newspaper to cover your work area
Prep and gluing 30 minutes, Melting with hair dryer: 15 minutes. Total time: 45 minutes to an hour.
Tip #1: Lay out your crayons on the edge of your canvas to plan out your colors.
This is a photo of my original canvas (on top) and work in progress on my friend’s canvas. Which brings us to:
Tip #2: Start and end with violets.
It is just more interesting to have the same color on both sides of the canvas. When you view it, you will envision the colors repeating in an endless rainbow. Also, remove all the browns and grays. They are no good for rainbows.
Tip #3: Do not put your colors in perfect rainbow order.
Don’t stress about whether Razzmatazz goes before or after Red Violet in the rainbow. A little imperfection in the color order creates visual contrast. I like to mix a lighter blue like periwinkle into my darker blues and a darker red into my oranges.
Tip #4: Glue your crayons with “Crayola” logo facing DOWN.
The oval crayola logo gets in the way of viewing the pretty crayon wrapper colors. Don’t bother unwrapping the crayons (tedious!) The black lines on the wrappers add a horizontal lines which are needed in this mostly vertical composition. Besides, everyone knows they are Crayolas, why pretend otherwise?
Tip #5: Cover your work area before hair drying
I used newspaper all over the concrete outside. But accidents happen so….
Tip #6: Mr. Clean Magic Erasers will remove melted crayon wax from just about everything…
…even the Hardiplank siding of my house. Oops.
Tip #7: Blow dry on high heat with a “low” blow setting. Point the blow dryer at the tops (not tips) of the crayons.
Some bloggers are suggesting to only blow dry the tips of the crayons. I disagree for two reasons: a) you will not melt the whole crayon, meaning less wax to play with; and b) you want the wax to run over the crayon wrapper. The wrappers will take on the color of the crayon wax, making the wrappers more interesting.
Finally, Tip #8: Encourage the crayon to melt more than halfway down the canvas.
This crafty project celebrates COLOR! Leaving your canvas more than half white defeats the purpose. You can encourage the crayon to spread further down the canvas by holding your hairdryer far away from the canvas, pointed at the dripping crayon.
Have fun with it! This is definitely art anyone can do!
Art + Food + Life 
July 5, 2012 at 4:48 pm
I was wondering if there were any good substitutes for hot glue that you could recommend, they’ve been banned from my college due to an incident involving the fire department, and my new room mate and I were hoping to do this together as a way to get to know each other.
July 5, 2012 at 5:01 pm
I bet you could do dots of guerrilla glue. Just test it out in the heat first, but I think it will hold.
July 27, 2012 at 1:49 am
I use super glue. It works great, just don’t get it on yourself!
September 15, 2012 at 6:49 pm
I recently did this and used “Loctite” all purpose adhesive. Worked very nicely!
November 17, 2012 at 2:58 pm
Do I need a high heat glue gun or will a low heat glue gun work?
November 18, 2012 at 3:19 pm
I used low temp.
December 2, 2012 at 11:43 am
Do i need to use Crayola crayons or will any brand work?
Also, I would prefer a smaller canvas… would that be okay?
December 2, 2012 at 12:46 pm
My art teacher gut reaction is to stick with Crayola because you know the colors will be vibrant and will melt well. Some off brand crayons use cheaper wax and pigments.
Feel free to use a smaller canvas. I just gave you the size I used for the number of crayons.
January 10, 2013 at 9:42 pm
I’ve been doing a lot of different crayon art lately (incorporating silhouettes). I recently read to use a diffuser attachment if using a hair dryer in order to eliminate the splatters. Can’t wait to try!
And yes, Kathy. Crayola crayons work best. I wanted to do a crayon art on a black canvas so the colors popped….but I didn’t use Crayola.. I used mostly RoseArt. There’s a picture somewhere on the internet where it shows Crayola vs. RoseArt crayons on a canvas left out in the sun for x-amount of hours.. Crayola one in amount melted and intensity of color hands down! I’ve seen that many people also use Cra-Z-Art crayons and they seem to work well too. But I don’t know for myself since I bought a 120-pack of Crayola crayons, haha.
February 3, 2013 at 2:08 pm
Would it be okay if I used a foam core board? Will I get the same results?
February 3, 2013 at 2:18 pm
I worry that the foam core has no texture. Even on the textured canvas, the dried wax had a tendency to crack and fall off. You could give it a shot though. It may be just fine.
February 11, 2013 at 3:25 am
I recently tried this project and a couple of things went wrong. From reading the tips in this article, I think I know what might have happened. I used a high heat on high setting on my blow dryer and pointed it at the tips of the crayons. The result was the hot glue itself melted, so the crayons started falling off the canvas. I bought cheap crayons as well. I’m going to try again using the low heat setting and pointing it at the tops of the crayons instead. Thanks for writing this article, some great tips in it. đŸ™‚
May 1, 2013 at 12:15 pm
i read somewhere to first paint the canvas with white acrylic so the wax slides better. Is this step really necessary
May 15, 2013 at 10:55 am
At a lower price!
June 12, 2013 at 7:28 pm
I heard that if you glue it down by the paper the crayons will start to slide out. I this true, what can I do to fix that
August 4, 2013 at 7:15 pm
I would just slide them back in and let them melt. Not a very fancy remedy though
August 4, 2013 at 3:35 pm
Use e-6000 glue, but you will need to use in a well-ventilated area, and allow it to dry for a day before blow-drying. Do NOT use hot glue! The whole point of hot glue is that it melts, usually at a lower temp than a crayons……
August 4, 2013 at 7:14 pm
I’ve done it 3 times with low melt hot glue and no problem. I’m sure an epoxy glue works well too.
September 1, 2013 at 8:54 pm
What if my blowdryer is oldish and doesn’t have settings like that its either high or low of same heating and its really strong is there any other way to melt crayons
September 2, 2013 at 6:53 am
You could try to hold the hair dryer further away from the crayons. I’ve also seen one where they put the crayons in a hot glue gun to melt, but it looked very messy.