"Wax on. Wax off."

Hahaha, I bring to you, not a reminiscence on Karate Kid, but a project I've been SO excited about trying since I clocked it on Pinterest some weeks ago (there are many, many links to this).... Making art out of melted wax crayons! I'm quite sure my dubious sidekick thought 'Oh my god, what has she got me roped into?' when I mentioned we'd be playing with hot wax, but I waited for us to do it together because I secretly knew he would have fun too. He did. I did. It was great. This is one of the many how-to-do-it links available out there http://megduerksen.typepad.com/whatever/2011/08/you-knew-i-was-going-to-make-one.html , and this is the result on the canvas. 'Such Fun!':

You can go as far as you like with the melting process, but I really liked how this turned out with the retro chic of the 'Crayola' graphic remaining in the wax crayon stubs. I bought to boxes of 24 Crayola wax crayons from Rymans. I think they were about £1.24 each. The canvas I'd had lying around for a while. The important thing with this project is to do it in a well ventilated area as the fumes from the wax and glue are pretty stinky. We did this outside in my yard, on a dry, sunny morning, with the help of an extension cable for my heat gun. I had glued the crayons into position on the canvas the night before with plenty of pva glue, then propped it up against a wall over some newspaper before we started applying heat.

We altered a hardback book cover too, that was just dying for this treat, with the remaining crayons (waste not want not and I kept the white crayons for wax resist). I think I'm going to play around with rubbing on some metallic oil pastels to bring out the contours created on the cover and then cover with gel medium to seal. More on that at a later date, but here is the result, I LOVE it!: