Pinstrosity Crayon Art Gallery of Awesomeness

I apologize this is a little late this morning. We've had hard news in the family and I'm a little emotional...which makes putting a post together a lot harder than you'd think. But, I'm here and it's good to have somewhere to direct my thoughts and attention. Bear with me and send happy thoughts for my husband's family. 

We've all seen today's pin. You can't hardly miss seeing it if you have a Pinterest account. It's everywhere. And, I'm not going to lie...I've even tried it. Em too. 

The Original Pins

http://megduerksen.typepad.com/whatever/2011/08/you-knew-i-was-going-to-make-one.html 

http://megduerksen.typepad.com/whatever/2011/08/you-knew-i-was-going-to-make-one.html

http://pinterest.com/pin/160511174189664070/

See, I told you you'd probably seen it. We've seen this done to varying degrees of success. Mine? Turned out okay, but not what I wanted so I chucked it. This was before the days of Pinstrosity and before I thought "Hey, I might want a picture of that for the future." I tried doing autumn colors over a leaf and peeling the leaf off. Didn't work so great. Or I should say didn't work at all. The actual melting of the crayons went great and it looked fine until I tried to pull off the leaf. But now I want to try again...of course it'd work this time (hahaha, right). 

We've been sent in quite the array of melted crayon art pieces. We've been saving them so that we could do an awesome gallery showing. So, prepare yourself for the Pinstrosity Crayon Art Gallery of Awesomeness. 

The Pinstrosities

So, I had this brilliant idea to start an altered book at the beginning of the summer. It was going great until about day three when I ran out of ideas. I looked on pinterest and found the melted crayon art thing. Simple enough; just crayons, hot glue, a hair dryer, and some sturdy paper. I had it all set up, with the crayons glued on and everything. Card stock is a little flimsy, but I needed it for my book to be able to actually close. I turned the hair dryer on full blast and sat down to watch the Olympics. I was only half paying attention to the crayons because rhythmic gymnastics was much more interesting. When I looked down at it again, I saw that about half of the crayons had fallen off and the light purple one had left a big streak down the middle. It looked like I had closed my eyes and scribbled with my right hand (I'm left handed). I threw it out, for obvious reasons. And that is the story of my crayon art... Fart. -Emma

I can't believe I am sending this in (what would my inner Martha Stewart say?!), but this is just too much of a gem in the world of pinterest fails.  You know those beautiful melted crayon art posts, with the great swirly colors and awesome drippy color palettes?  Upon immediately seeing them you want to run out to the store and buy a fresh box of crayolas- and then melt them all into a Van Gogh-esque masterpiece.

I was at my husband's company picnic and they had a booth set up to make name plaques using melted crayons.  I was so excited- as were most of the other women (and some men) at the picnic.  It was technically supposed to be a kids craft table, but that didn't stop nearly every adult from participating.

My excitement and elation lasted until the first wax drip came down the canvas and to my dismay I realized that red-toned crayons look just like blood.  In my rush to see if I could make it look any better I got a little over zealous and didn't take my time in melting them- blasting the hair dryer heat in a desperate attempt to outwit the pinstrosity that was awaiting.  And thus, Home Sweet Home... and blood, was my end result.  Sad day.  

At least the smell of melting crayons brought back childhood memories! -Hilary

Didn't turn out quite the way I had hoped. -Holly

So my friends and I get together on Sundays and have brunch and Pinterest-inspired crafting. This one Sunday, we decided try our hands at Crayola art. We decided to peel ours because we didn't have all Crayola brand, which ended up taking most of our time. And we used smaller boards because that is a LOT of crayons. Well, it didn't turn out quite as we expected...   -Jessica

Crayon art works and is pretty. -Kori

The original project was supposed to have very neat artistic look to the crayons...this was my outcome and i had to smear the crayon to even look like that! -Sierra

You know...we seriously should open up a Pinstrosity gallery. That'd be awesome. This might be the opening exhibit. 

So the melted crayon art isn't quite as easy as it looks in the pins. Honestly, what project is? But, it's not impossible. Here are a few tips I learned from my experience and from what I've read. 

-It is best to keep the paper on the crayons. This helps the wax to melt and run down better and keeps the colors from mixing right from the get go. Learned that one the hard way. 

-Using a variation of colors really helps to make these pop. My first one I just used browns and that wasn't so pretty. My second one I went from red to orange to yellow to olive greens to browns and that one looked a lot better. 

-If you want a really runny looking piece of art you want to melt the crayons fast and thoroughly. Have the heat on high and hold the blow dryer close to the crayons. But beware, when the crayons start melting, they go fast!

-In addition to high heat, once the crayon starts melting you can help push the wax down the paper with the force of the air; just aim the blow dryer downward rather than straight on. 

-My first try I used just half a crayon and it worked...but it just wasn't as much wax as I thought it would be. If you're doing an 8x10 or larger I suggest using the entire crayon. 

-You need to glue the crayons to the board. Don't tape them to the board...doesn't work so great. I hot glued mine and they held fantastic, even with the heat.