Melted Crayon Art Tutorial: LOVE Letter Tiles

I've never really been big on decorating for holidays, other than Christmas.  We've always lived in such small spaces that I didn't want the extra clutter.  I had every intention of leaving our Silent Night painting up until we move sometime around April...but then inspiration struck.  The Nativity painting came down and these went up. 

I stumbled across this graphic on Remodelholic...

...and I thought...wouldn't that look great with melted crayon dots instead of sprinkles?!?  (A little less messy too.) 

And I LOVE how it turned out.

I'd planned on doing the whole word LOVE on a piece of wood or something, but when I went hunting around in the garage for something that would work, I found 4 tiles I'd bought over a year ago to make some trivets...and I think they turned out to work perfectly.

I'd also originally thought to use all red/pink/white, but then decided to use a mix of colors so it could be used more of the year.  I wish I knew what accent colors I wanted to use in our new living room because I would have used those.  The colors turned out so bold and bright that I think when we move, these are going to find a permanent home in the kids' playroom.  (I know...I can hardly believe we're finally going to have a playroom...other than our living room.)

I think this technique would also work great to make monograms for the kid's rooms.  I love the vivid colors and the texture you get with melted crayon art.

And it's SO easy and uses up some of those old crayons you're sure to have lying around.

Here's what I did...

You'll need to start out gathering your supplies.

• You'll want some kind of backing...tiles, canvas, wood, etc.  (If you're using wood, you'll want to paint a base coat of whatever color you want the letters to be.)
• Old crayons...if your house is anything like ours, you've got no shortage of them.
• Candle and matches (I dripped some wax on my candle, so make sure it's not a really pretty one you care about.)
• Template to trace your letters from.  I printed my letters off the computer and used "Ariel Black" font with bold added.

Once I had everything gathered, I traced my letters onto the tile with pencil.

Then I chose a crayon and peeled off the paper.  You put the tip in flame of your candle until you see it start to soften and form a drip.  This only takes a second or two.  Then you touch the tip of the crayon to your tile.  Reheat your candle, add another dot, etc.

I used one color and randomly added dots all over the tile, except where I wanted my letter to be.

Then I moved on to a second color, adding dots all over.  (I know...it looks a little like I bled all over the tile.)

And you keep building up different colors of crayons until you've covered your tile, except for your letter.
This is with 3 colors.  I try to use a mix of dark shades and light shades as I go.

And this is with several more layers added...

and you'll have a little pile of crayon nubs...and a dripped on candle left.

Then repeat for your other letters.

A few things I've learned about melted crayon dot art...the cheap jumbo crayons from the dollar store are awesome to use for these...especially if you use them on your first layer or two.  They often come in different (and often lighter shades) than the crayolas (so add some contrast), they're big, so they provide more coverage faster...and of course they're generally crummy to actually color/draw with, so I'm happy to use them up and have them out of the house.

Lighter blue is especially hard to get with the general packs of Crayola, so the light blue you see here was a dollar store jumbo.  I also added some purple, silver, and grey for contrast.

I found a glittery green crayon and love the look it gave the V...the lightest green was a dollar store jumbo.

The yellow was the trickiest because it needed to be bold to stand out...and yellow just isn't that bold...but I didn't want it to look orange.  I added a little gold for contrast, and some regular yellow.  Most of the dots were done with a "dandelion" crayon (which we had a lot of since they come in the 24 crayola packs).  I also added some flesh tone to give a little contrast without looking too orange.  I'm not super thrilled with the yellow, but taken with the other tiles, it looks great.

Once I do figure out what color the accents in our living room will be at our new house, I'm excited to come up with some more melted crayon letter art.

And if you have a problem with too many old crayons like we do...

...you might be interested in some of our other melted crayon art projects.

And...as luck would have it...the mantel just looked like it was still missing something...something with a little more height...so the next day I came up with this little Valentine Tree.  I'll share how to make it soon (hopefully tomorrow), so check back. :)  Click here for the tutorial.

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