Recently I have become the Lucille Ball of Pinterest. All of the projects I try seem go the route of the conveyer belt in the candy factory. Remember Lucy and Ethel completely losing mastery over their candy wrapping skills and resorting to stuffing candy in their hats and mouths to hide their ineptitude from their supervisor? Lately, that is me and anything from Pinterest.
Last night was girls night here at the house. Daughter #2 was ready to tackle a project. Rather than spending money I thought we would do something that required only supplies we had on hand. People are always giving me crayons to use with the kids at church despite the fact that the kids at church much prefer markers. So, I knew there was a whole basket of superfluous crayons that had just last week been left in my mudroom. Pinterest has no shortage of crayon using ideas.
We settled on tiles that Polly over at Helping Little Hands calls “love letters” because she made tiles to spell out “love”. All Polly did was take a white tile, pencil the outline of the letter she wanted to feature on each tile, and dab the remainder of the tile with the melted end of a crayon. Simple. Beautiful. A box of plain white tiles was left in the house by the previous owners so we had all the supplies we needed. We were in.
Our supplies included a bowl of m and m’s for color inspiration.
We each settled down with a tile and a plan. Rather than make a word we would each do a monogram tile for ourselves or a friend. I used a letter stencil that I had on hand, Daughter #1 printed her letter in a large font she liked on the computer and Daughter #2 outlined her letter free hand. We choose our color families and removed the paper from the crayons. Then each of us fired up a candle and set to work.
I melted a dusty pink crayon end and my very first “dab” stuck fast to the tile. It did not budge when I tried to remove it. I had a lovely white tile with a dusty rose handle. When I finally was able to chisel it away from the tile absolutely no pinkness remained on the tile. I think I chose a bum crayon, an off brand. I tried again using both Rose Art and Crayola brands and had no further problems.
The process is very forgiving. Get some crayon wax where you did not want it on the tile and you can simply scrape it away. It can be messy working with drippy wax though so we found it helpful to have a rag covering our work space.
We popped in a movie and for two solid hours we pounced melted crayons onto ceramic tile. We also laughed until we cried and generally enjoyed each other’s company. By the end of the night, our art making had deteriorated into rearranging our finished tiles into dubious words that would probably be accepted on Words with Friends.
Tonight we are going to make more!
Sharing with Mama Kat who urged this week, “Time to get crafty”. Saturday night I was reading Funk Junk Interiors and on a whim linked up there. And then again at Wow Us Wednesdays and House of Hepworths.
This is SO COOL! I am so going to do this with my daughters!
So easy too!
Stopping by from Mama Kats…
This reminds me of something I saw at SOFA where an artist took crayons and arranged them so that they made a picture. A lot like pointillism but with crayons.
Thanks for sharing,
That sounds really interesting. Would love to see it.
I think I’ll try this. It kind of reminds me of the texture of the linoleum type floors from back in the 70′s where something was poured on a floor and little flakes of soemthing else sprinkled over it and all sealed with some kind of clear top coat. The colors could be matched to the decor colors. I remember my aunt had an orange0white one to go with her orange counter tops in the new house she had built.
hi from mk’s
Interesting craft project.Seems great for kids. (Better then eating the crayons I’m sure.)
Gag, sputter! Can you imagine what a crayon would taste like?!
I LOVE this idea.
LOVE it.
Seems simple enough to do.
And who (anyone with kids anyway) doesn’t have extra crayons lying around?
It is soooo simple. Probably why I had success!
This is awesome! I’m definitely putting it on my to-do list…seems like it would be kind of therapeutic!
It is relaxing. You get in a rhythm and it becomes mindless.
That sounds like a great night. I love when crafts go smoothly and everyone actually enjoys themselves, as opposed to what normally happens here, where we start out smoothly and by the end mommy is yelling at everyone to “back off” so she can “fix” everything.
It helps that my kids are 21 and 19! They’d be more likely to have to fix my craft!
So fun! I’ve got to try these with the kids!
The great thing is that if the “artists” get messy, the wax can be scraped off where it shouldn’t be. Of course, I know this from my own tile not my kids’!
The originals that spelled out love were really cute. I was delighted to find it so easy to do!