I have always loved playing with crayons and when I first saw melted crayon layouts some time ago I fell in love with them. I have only recently started playing with melted crayons, however, and I have been experimenting with some techniques for making backgrounds.
Please note I have used Crayola crayons in all my backgrounds on plain 12x12 cardstock from Target. Each background uses three different coloured crayons.
1. Dripping
This is the easiest method but if you want full coverage you will need to use a LOT of crayons. The above picture is a 12x12 which I have dripped three full crayons on. The drips are a little too uniform for my liking but I could easily change this by varying the height I am melting the crayon at. I also love the little "splashes" that I have on the page around the larger drops (and yes melted crayons hurt if they splash on you).
To drip the crayons I simply held the crayon above the page and with my other hand held my heat gun at the end of the crayon to melt the end. Hold the crayon in your fingers (with care or you will get burned) or with any sort of secure holder, e.g. alligator clip - NOT plastic. You can vary the size of the drips by moving the crayon closer and further away from the page. You can also move the crayon around to gather more liquid wax at the tip before it falls but this requires a little practice (at least for me).
This gives a more watery or liquid feel to the background from the crayons, although that could just be the colours I used :) I really like the look of this one.
To get this effect I scribbled the crayon directly onto the paper while I was also melting it with the heat gun. Basically, the crayon itself became an applicator for the melted wax forming at its tip. I then scribbled randomly across the paper all in the same direction. To get the look I started with the darkest colour first and then went up to the lightest. It doesn't look like I used much of the lightest colour but because I had the heat gun directly near the paper the wax was being remelted and the lighter crayon largely mixed with the colours underneath it.
If you look at the edges of the crayon (near the stitching) you will see a slight halo effect as described above. I found that this effect was reduced with this background as I had discovered at this point that by just holding the heat gun a little further back I could still melt the crayon without melting the wax already on the paper as much.
3. Spreading
Honestly, this background was just an experiment gone wrong and I am not overly happy about it. I wanted to share it though as you may be able to improve on it and please let me know if you do.
To start with I decided to cut the crayons up into smaller sections and randomly spread them across the page. I then melted then directly but since I hadn't secured them with anything I mostly chased them across the page with my heat gun. Ok, that bit was fun. Once I had done that I had no where near the look or coverage I was hoping for. It sort of looked like a very fat and drunken snail had stepped in paint and was trying to go home across my page. What I them did was get a spatula and while my heat gun was melting the wax, "strategically" spread the wax across my page. The end result is the colours have mostly been mixed together but I am sure this could be improved on.
4. "Colouring"
These final two pages are variations on the same basic technique. I think I am much happier with the green page then I am with the grey in terms of how they look, but the green one has a much larger halo around its edges because the wax was melted on the page much more then the grey. This extra melting also produced a much smoother effect then the grey page.
To get this look I heated the crayon up with the heat gun just like my scribbling page. I then used the crayon again as my applicator but this time allowed pools of wax to form which I then moved the crayon through while it was still being melted by the heat gun. Again I went from dark to light with the lightest colour largely mixing in with the previous colours.
Please note I have used Crayola crayons in all my backgrounds on plain 12x12 cardstock from Target. Each background uses three different coloured crayons.
1. Dripping
This is the easiest method but if you want full coverage you will need to use a LOT of crayons. The above picture is a 12x12 which I have dripped three full crayons on. The drips are a little too uniform for my liking but I could easily change this by varying the height I am melting the crayon at. I also love the little "splashes" that I have on the page around the larger drops (and yes melted crayons hurt if they splash on you).
To drip the crayons I simply held the crayon above the page and with my other hand held my heat gun at the end of the crayon to melt the end. Hold the crayon in your fingers (with care or you will get burned) or with any sort of secure holder, e.g. alligator clip - NOT plastic. You can vary the size of the drips by moving the crayon closer and further away from the page. You can also move the crayon around to gather more liquid wax at the tip before it falls but this requires a little practice (at least for me).
You can see in the above photo's a "halo" forming around some of my drops. This occurs when you melt the wax directly onto the paper or the wax remelts on the paper after it has dropped. I am guessing it is the oily components of the wax melting and being absorbed by the paper compared to the more solid components which are not absorbed. It does not happen when melted wax drips onto the paper and does not remelt
2. Scribbling
This gives a more watery or liquid feel to the background from the crayons, although that could just be the colours I used :) I really like the look of this one.
To get this effect I scribbled the crayon directly onto the paper while I was also melting it with the heat gun. Basically, the crayon itself became an applicator for the melted wax forming at its tip. I then scribbled randomly across the paper all in the same direction. To get the look I started with the darkest colour first and then went up to the lightest. It doesn't look like I used much of the lightest colour but because I had the heat gun directly near the paper the wax was being remelted and the lighter crayon largely mixed with the colours underneath it.
If you look at the edges of the crayon (near the stitching) you will see a slight halo effect as described above. I found that this effect was reduced with this background as I had discovered at this point that by just holding the heat gun a little further back I could still melt the crayon without melting the wax already on the paper as much.
3. Spreading
Honestly, this background was just an experiment gone wrong and I am not overly happy about it. I wanted to share it though as you may be able to improve on it and please let me know if you do.
To start with I decided to cut the crayons up into smaller sections and randomly spread them across the page. I then melted then directly but since I hadn't secured them with anything I mostly chased them across the page with my heat gun. Ok, that bit was fun. Once I had done that I had no where near the look or coverage I was hoping for. It sort of looked like a very fat and drunken snail had stepped in paint and was trying to go home across my page. What I them did was get a spatula and while my heat gun was melting the wax, "strategically" spread the wax across my page. The end result is the colours have mostly been mixed together but I am sure this could be improved on.
4. "Colouring"
These final two pages are variations on the same basic technique. I think I am much happier with the green page then I am with the grey in terms of how they look, but the green one has a much larger halo around its edges because the wax was melted on the page much more then the grey. This extra melting also produced a much smoother effect then the grey page.
To get this look I heated the crayon up with the heat gun just like my scribbling page. I then used the crayon again as my applicator but this time allowed pools of wax to form which I then moved the crayon through while it was still being melted by the heat gun. Again I went from dark to light with the lightest colour largely mixing in with the previous colours.
Some more halo around the edge of the green - it's quite large on this background as the crayon melted more then once on the paper
Have fun trying these out and improving on them. I will be continuing to experiment with my crayons and let you know if I find anything interesting.
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