Melting Crayons Holiday Art & Special Needs Art Class

Ever since I discovered that you can can melt crayons and make it into an art piece or a new medium to reuse, I had to do my own!! The wonderful world of Pinterest introduced me to this artform and while some of you may think it simple and not really art, to me its quite expressive and the most amazing part is that the you are only limited to your own imagination with what you can come up with!

About 4 years ago I started working in special education and one of the activities I did with one of my classes was to break up crayons, which the kids loved to do and put them into silicon shaped cupcake trays and then pop them in the oven. The crayons we created were well recieved by the students and the art works that followed with the students using them were fun and creative! Melting down crayons are fun and make great presents for kids.

Well back to what I has inspired me lately. Here is a picture that got me thinking.

Then I came across this blog about working this idea into a special needs classroom which inspired me further to try and make this particular artform work in my class this year. Aside from that I really wanted to experiement with this idea at home and make something with the kids to put up on our walls. So I purchased some canvases from the Hot Dollar shop and two packets of 25 crayons, not crayola brand, but any wax crayons work well, it just depends on what colours you want to use. I wanted to do something with my kids's hand prints and then have the melted crayons around the hands. I decided to use clear contact. I traced around my son's hands on the paper side of the contact then cut them out. I stuck each hand on the canvas in the position I wanted them. Then I went about melting the crayons. I didn't do it the exact way as above. I really had no specific plan other than to give it a go and see what came of it. I think it worked out well. When you have finished melting the crayons and got the desired look, carefully peel away the contact.

You have to be really gentle with your hairdryer as I had some issues with the contact rolling up and off the canvas. Its a little bit fiddly, but I enjoyed it. My boys( 3, 6, 9) on the other hand got a bit bored, but at least I had fun right?!! I will also note that this can be done with your regular hair dryer and it will take a little while to do the crayons melting. Otherwise you can use a heat gun which can be purchased at Bunnings. The last time I was there I saw them for $20, I didn't get one because I wanted to see how my hair dryer went first.

I tried the hands again with my daughter who is 10, almost 11, and the contact didn't stay on well for hers so this is what we ended up with.

Its still bright and I will definately be putting both up on one of our walls in our house. My daughter really enjoyed this activity. She loved seeing the crayons melt into each other. The above picture isn't the best and doesn't really do the canvas justice unfortunately, but its the best I can do with no digital camera!
I am yet to get my other boys interested. They cared more for Wizard 101 today, which is a shame. I might just go ahead and do something for them anyway.

If you wanted to consider this for an art activity for a special needs class and you have students with high support needs. You can easily use a switch adapter for the hairdryer.