Crayon art projects

Crayons are usually the first type of art supplies that young children are introduced to .Crayon art is also often proudly displayed on many parents walls. Most parents don’t give very young toddlers any crayons as they are  not really ready for them. They do have however, these Beginnings Baby Crayons that are made specifically for babies already able to grasp things in their grip. If you really feel that you want to give your young toddlers/babies crayons then try those.

When small children start coloring with crayons you are best off giving them the  Jumbo (So Big) Crayons as they are much easier to grasp than the thin crayola crayons. They also have nowadays  Triangular Crayons which are good for small chubby hands to grasp as well. I would not start any more sophisticated crayon art projects with kids until they are a bit older like 4 or so. Once they start getting bored of plain scribbling with crayons there are a few different crayon art projects you can do with them.

The first one is one that uses crayon shavings. This MUST be done with an adult as you use an iron that gets quite hot. The children can first peel the crayons which is an activity in itself. After they are peeled you can then shave them. I actually used a grater in this case but, you can use plastic knives as well to peel off shavings from the peeled crayons.

After you have enough shavings, you take two pieces of wax paper. You put the shavings on the first piece and then cover that with the second piece. Together with your child you can then iron them together for a few seconds. They can actually see the crayons melting as the wax paper is ironed. There have been times when I did this as a Fall craft project by having the children collect fall colored leaves and putting them on the wax paper with the shavings.

The children can then cut around the stuck pieces of wax paper into any shape they want. You can then punch a hole at the top of the art work and put on a piece of yarn to hang it. It can be used as a tree ornament, a window art project or a mobile.

Crayon resist art

Crayon resist art works like this. The children color on a paper with crayon. In this case they used white crayons to get the best result. The crayons are wax so they make marks on the paper that will resist any color that is put on top of it. In the cases above, the children colored with the white wax crayons and then painted all over the paper. Wherever there was wax crayon, the markings of the crayon showed through.

A little tip: If you don’t have crayons you can do this activity with a wax candle as well.

 Crayon scratch art

Even though I don’t have a picture of a crayon scratch art activity, this one is as old as the hills. The children basically color with strong color all over a paper. They then take a black crayon and color over the entire colored picture. Once that is done, they can take a sharp edge like a toothpick or end of a sharp scissor and they scratch out a picture. The black crayon gets scratched way and the colorful crayon shows through.

How To Make Crayons

What  do you do with your old, broken crayons. Or what do you do when you just want to make your own crayons. If you don’t want to mess in the kitchen then you can just pick up the Crayola Crayon Maker. It is a very popular gift for kids, it melts the crayons down and its very safe. One of the complaints about the crayon maker is that it makes very small crayons and it takes a while to do. If  however, you want to do try to do this yourself you certainly can and here is how to make homemade crayons by melting crayons that you already have.

This is how I tried it and what I found when doing it.

I found these chocolate molds I had in the house that I decided to use. I peeled and cut up some crayons and put them into the molds. I baked them and then removed them and let them cool. A few things I noticed. You should use thicker molds as the crayons will be easier to color with when done. You may want to use the silicone molds that are available to be put in the oven. This way when the crayons are cooled you can just pop them out. I found that to get these out I had to use the end of a pointy scissor to  lift them out.

Melted crayon art

I had been seeing a lot about melted crayon art and at first I thought it was talking about the melting the crayon shavings in the wax paper or melting down crayons to make new crayons. Then I noticed many places on the web where people are doing this real cool melted crayon art. For the most part they are lining up crayons on the top of a canvas without the wrappers on. They then use a hot blow dryer to melt the crayons. It is very cool as it melts all the way down onto the canvas. There is not too much leeway to control it but, the kids can help with this as the blow dryer doesn’t get that hot when holding it.

photo credit: mrsdkrebs

If your kids just really love coloring with crayons and don’t want to mess with the more atypical crayon art then you can just make sure to have an array of the different crayon products they have out now. There are really cute Twistable Crayons and for special occasions you can get the   Glitter Crayons.

It’s really amazing that they even have now  Dry Erase Crayons so the kids don’t have to resort to using the dry erase markers.

If you want the kids to have some fun on their tee shirts or some other types of fabrics then there are the fabric crayons that make it very easy to color on fabric. For something really special you can buy the Watercolor Crayons and for kids that get bored in the bathtub there are the fun   Crayola Washable Tub Crayons .

So there you go…crayons and crayon art for every occasion.