Hey guys! I saw this recent post by Summer6061:
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=388398.0 and knew I had to have something similar for my daughter's room.
Okay, okay you caught me... I was going to make it for myself but my walls are covered, whereas her walls are depressingly bare and ugh, *white*.
Nothing more depressing than bare white walls.
I know I don't have pictures to go along with it but I was going to post how I did it step by step for you guys so everyone could try it. The way I did it was super cheap.
Supplies:
-Shadow box (you can get them at most craft stores. I think I got mine at Micheals with a 40% off coupon I got from their mailing list or you can wait till someone has a sale. They have them all of the time.)
-old thin thin blanket or some sort of white material (My mother is a nurse and has been in and out of the hospital a lot because of a blood disorder so therefore we have those very thin hospital blankets. Those work really well! I also think an old white T-shirt would work great too.)
-Glue gun
-crayons (for this 10 x 10 shadow box I used two 24 count boxes, but only certain colors would work for the effect I wanted and I repeated some of the colors a few times)
-heat gun, hairdryer, or lots of time in the hot sun (though if you use the sun just realize you will not have as much control over how it will look.)
So after I realized I had all of the things I needed I got to work!
1. Take the back out of the shadow box and then cut out a piece of the material you would like to use, leaving an inch or two extra all around.
2. Stretch your material over the shadow box backing and hot glue the edges on the back. A good thing to do to the corners is trim them before you glue them down. See my crappily drawn paint picture below for visual reference:
Tada! You have your own dirt cheap canvas to work with!
3. Figure out how many crayons you will need and what order you would like them in and make sure that after they are glued that they will still fit in the box. What I did was I took the square wooden insert that was in mine and placed it on my homemade canvas and lined the crayons inside the square.
4. Now you can start gluing your crayons onto your canvas one by one. Here's a tip: if you want them to look uniform when everything is done, line them up by the wrappers, not the edge of the crayon. I learned this the hard way. I glued them on with the wrappers in a random order because I thout it looked neat but you can make it to where the logo is facing forward on all of them. It's whatever you want.
5. After you are done gluing, make sure that the whole thing still fits together and then prepare for melting!
6. I would recommend going outside somewhere are using a generous amount of covering to protect your belongings, wall, and floor because this can and will splatter/pool and wax is hard to get off and can stain. Prop your glued creation up at an angle and melt it with your heat gun, hair dryer, or you can even leave it in the sun for a while. If you opt for sun only I would say your best bet would be to put in in a car in direct sunlight. What I did was placed the baby in direct sun and used a hair dryer because I am an extremely impatient person. It worked very well. After it all ran down a bit I used the hair dryer to make the colors spread out to blend the colors a bit.
7. After you are done you can lay it flat in your fridge/ freezer for a few minutes to harden and flatten out if it bowed; Which mine did and it flattened right out after it sat in the freezer a bit.
8. Put your canvas back in your shadow box (after making sure the glass is smudge-free on the inside) and you are ready to hang it on the wall and enjoy your art!
I hope this makes sense and helps someone! If you have anything to add or any questions for me, don't hesitate to chime in! If you try this out I would *love* to see your results! I think I am going to make many more of these with glitter crayons and maybe even one with the bisexual flag colors for my wall!
Happy crafting!
