Coloring with crayons isn’t substantially different from drawing, or even painting. Of course, if we truly wanted to paint with crayons, we need look no further than your friendly household death ray: the hair dryer. Here’s what you need:
The big box and the wrapping paper can be swapped with nearly anything that can catch splattering wax. Then simply tape the paper to the shoebox, the crayons to the top of the paper, and tilt.
At which point, you point your heat gun at the crayons and watch the wax floooowwwwwwww.
Notice how the camera focused on my hand? That’s how you know it loves me. In the uninteresting background, things are going pretty good. I would advise you to experiment with different angles of attack, so you can get the wax flow right, with minimum splatter. Also, blow the drippings from side to side, covering more of the paper in fabulous colors.
Boom! Fun fact: that picture is labeled “C04”. Now, about that tape. You see, when I taped all those crayons to the top, it held perfectly fine. It wasn’t until I tipped the shoebox that most of the crayons just fell. One solution is to glue the crayons in place, probably with hot glue. The other solution is to not do it, it looks perfectly fine.
For some reason, I like it better upside down. At this point, you want to frame it. Not only because it is a magnificent piece of art that is totally going up on your fridge, but also because it tends to curl around the edges.
At this point, I started thinking of other ways to have cool melty patterns. It turns out that simply laying crayon pieces on some paper and trying to melt them with the thinking man’s flamethrower is a bad idea. They just roll around. What about drawing on some paper, and melting the drawing? Pretty much no difference. No, if I was going to melt that wax, I needed to confine it.
So I broke off some chunks of crayon and folded the paper around the edges. As you might guess, that wax took a little while to get melty. Halfway along, I helped it reach its full potential like a good sports coach; by squishing it flat.
From there, I picked it up and moved it around. I kept the infrared emitter trained on it, and watched the wax flow in different directions.
Is that an eight-legged horse stuck in taffy? Or is it like 90% of those ink blots, and actually a…
Butterfly. There were some lumps left over, so I gingerly scrapped them off and saved them for later. To cover up the surgery scars, the sirocco wind-waker spent a handful of seconds softening the edges.
At this point, I had spent all of perhaps 33 cents of my dollar store crayons. Determined to make up for lost time, I got out the foil.
The only sensible way to shake hands with the devil. Anyways, there is no lamer pun than “do you need a hand?” The best way to pull it off is to be on the receiving end, and to have a third hand on standby, preferably as a piece of art.
There is some irony in Disney’s Frozen crayons being melted here, but mostly I got them because they were large. The ol’ therminator took a little while to melt all that wax, but it didn’t give up.
The little pyroclastic flow simulator that could. You are looking at about a dollar of wax made to look like highly suspicious jello. That wasn’t enough for me. I had to add the other one dollars’ worth of wax.
It isn’t pretty. Those crayons have gone through a soul-darkening ordeal, and I got tired of peeling paper off of ungrateful sticks. In the end, they all melt alike, they always do.
I did make some effort to remove the empty papers from the mold, and it looks like I was picking through a wet ash tray. The nice thing is, wax is relatively easy to get off of your skin, provided you didn’t heat it up too much.
After letting it cool for hours, I peeled the foil away, revealing a rainbow hand. Go ahead, scroll up to the header to see it in its morning glory. Now scroll back to me. Old spice. Australian “odd space.” Now you too can tell your friends, “No, I already got one, and it’s very nice.” French accents are optional, but recommended.
About Brandon Quist
Brandon is originally from Olmsted Falls, Ohio. He has studied both at Baldwin Wallace college and Brigham Young University, and is currently pursuing Chemical Engineering, among other things. He considers himself a jack of all trades, and a master of none. In his spare time, Brandon enjoys knitting, guitar, reading, origami, writing, and photography.
This looks fun to try with my grandchildren! Thanks!