Melted Crayon Vase
A few years ago I made a couple of wall art pieces using melted crayons, and to this day they are hanging up in our house. As much fun as I had, I hadn’t thought about making more until recently. I made wall art the first time around, but I started wondering what would happen if I tried the same technique on something three-dimensional. I do love creating textured containers, after all. That’s how the idea for a melted crayon vase was born!
Does everyone have a large bin of miscellaneous crayons? Just us? Cool. Going through this one to pick out my colors was entertaining. It’s like a scrapbook of every restaurant we’ve ever eaten at with the kids. I think there are crayons in there from every activity book they’ve ever owned, too. These crayons were perfect for this project, but if you don’t happen to have anything like this, any box of crayons will do. It’s back to school time here, so you can buy a box of 24 Crayola crayons for 50 cents.
You could use any glass container for the base of this. I chose a jar I had recently emptied and washed out. (Upcycling for the win!) As it happens, I’m glad I didn’t choose anything much bigger than that. This is not a difficult project, but it does take some time. Just something to consider
Supplies:
- Glass bottle/jar
- Crayons
- Tea light
- Candle lighter
The first step is choosing your crayons and preparing them for melting. Because I had the big bin of crayons to work with, I didn’t pay attention to the brands and just chose the colors I wanted. I was making a whole rainbow, so I only needed one crayon of each color. If you’re repeating colors, you may need more than one. Even if you need to buy crayons, they aren’t very expensive. I tend to stock up on them during back-to-school sales, because you just never know when they’ll come in handy.
Once you’ve selected your colors, peel off the crayon labels. Some labels were easier to remove than others, but I didn’t have too much trouble with any of them.
To me, this process is kind of like creating a wax seal. You want to melt the wax, and then press it onto the surface. In this case, you’re only melting the end of the crayon, and then you press it onto the glass. Hold the crayon close to the flame until you can see the wax melting. I turn the crayon slowly to get it evenly melted. Then quickly hold it against the glass, and the wax should stick. I usually got 1-3 “stamps” of wax before I needed to warm the crayon again.
For my design, I made a ring around the vase with the first color, and then I moved on to the next. I kept going until I had a rainbow of colors.
I had a lot of fun bringing this vision to life, and now I can envision all sorts of projects using this technique. I wasn’t sure exactly how it would turn out on a 3D object, but I love it!
The one thing I haven’t figured out yet is how to seal the wax. I’d like to protect the vase, but I don’t want something that will disturb the crayon too much. I don’t want wax flakes everywhere. Resin makes me a little nervous. So that’s something I’m still pondering. In the meantime, I’m just trying not to move the vase too much. If you have any ideas for me, please let me know in the comments below!
Happy crafting!
