This summer, my lucky little family had an opportunity to visit the Crayola Factory in Easton, PA. While we were there, they had a fabulous melted-crayon painting project that I couldn’t wait to recreate at home!
You will need:
- Crayons
- Cupcake pan (the disposable ones work well)
- Q-Tips
- Thick paper (like watercolor paper, cardstock, or possibly construction paper)
- Some sort of heating element, like a stove or toaster oven
Good to have:
- Baking dish that the muffin tray fits in, filled with a little hot water
- Something to cover your workspace and protect it from inevitable drips
The Project:
Unwrap the crayons and break them into small pieces. Fill each cavity of the muffin tray with a different color of crayon bits. Heat the crayons to melt them, about 200*, until they are nice and liquid. Use the Q-Tips as paintbrushes, and paint away on your paper! Reheat the crayons as necessary.
Tips:
- This is a project that requires supervision! Hot, melted crayons plus kids might equal burns, so be prepared! I find that if you are very clear about the fact that it’s hot, they tend to be careful, but you ought to be ready with some Neosporin just to be safe!
- If you don’t want to work over the stove, you could probably boil some water to fill a baking dish (bigger than your muffin tray) and set the whole thing on a hot pad on the table. It would be like those buffets where they use hot water to keep everything warm without the heating elements present. You might have to add more hot water every so often, and I wouldn’t put too much water because you don’t want to get it in your crayons, but it would probably work long enough for the kids to do their project!
- Experiment with your paintbrush substitutes. I also tried some lip-gloss test brushes from a department store, which worked well, but because they are plastic I had to watch that they didn’t melt. The Crayola Factory used long Q-Tips, like at the doctor’s office. Q-Tips only last a little while before they start to unravel, so plan on using more than one for each color.
- Choose colors that fit a theme. We only used black, orange, lime green (yellow + green), purple, and white because I wanted it to be a Halloween picture. You don’t need a lot of colors for the kids to have fun! If it comes down to it, just pick one color and let them have at it!
- This might be a great opportunity to teach your child about colors and how certain colors mix together to make other colors… (red+blue=purple, red+yellow=orange, yellow+blue=green)
- When you’re done, let the crayons harden in the tray and then pop them out. You could store them in a bag or an empty frosting container and reuse them again next time. For this reason, I use about three crayons per cavity.
- Look around at different stores for the cheapest crayons; I found boxes of 24 crayons at Target for $.17 each. Don’t pay more than you have to. And remember, old broken crayons are PERFECT for this type of project! Why else would kids constantly be breaking their crayons than to provide you with supplies for future projects, right?
- For the younger kids, it’s not about the picture, it’s about the experience and excitement of watching the liquid crayon return to its hardened state and the fun of feeling it afterward. If you want to, and have the time, trace a picture on the paper first (like a coloring book page) and ask them to fill it in. Even if you just end up with a lot of dots and squiggly lines, though, this is a great project for kids to experiment with. My son must have said, “Wow! This is a fun project, Mom,” ten times while we did ours! So, HAVE FUN!
