I had totally accepted my Pinterest Challenge FAIL yesterday when I wrote my post about it. Really, I had. I knew there were some things that I could change before setting my crayons out in the sun to bake again and I had every intention of trying out some of those changes. I felt like my first attempt hadn't been all that bad. Heck, some of you even thought it looked good enough to frame. Even still, I knew I could do better. But then...sigh.
Then I started clicking links and looking around and reading comments and I started seeing all these other melted crayon masterpieces and they looked good. Like, really good. And way better than mine. But from what I could tell, no one else went with the sit-it-out-in-the-sun-to-bake method like I did. Or actually I guess I should say no one stuck it out all day like I did. Well, I'm sure someone did, just not anyone whose blog I read.
If using something other than the sun to melt the crayons could be called cheating, then I read about quite a bit of cheating going on! There was a lot of hair dryer usage to get a nice drippy effect. I knew that wouldn't work for me, though, because I recently sweet-talked Doc into cleaning out the little lent tray thingy on my hair dryer and now it doesn't get as hot as it used to. Then, later in the afternoon, I read one blog post that showed the crayons dripping in the oven. Hmmmm...
Doc is still out of town so after work I drove over to my parents house for dinner. I know I just spent the whole weekend over there, but I'm not one to pass up on a free meal. Especially lasagna. (That meal almost got really expensive for me since I got pulled over on my way to their house. Luckily I got off with just a warning. Phew!) There's a Fred's located just around the corner from their house and I have to pass it to get there and this time I just had to swing my car into the parking lot to pick up another pack of crayons. This time I sprung for the 64 pack!
So while my mom finished preparing dinner, I dug around in her cabinets to find some baking tools and ignored her comments of "You are NOT cooking crayons in my oven." I promised her I'd be real careful.
I was originally going to use the big center piece from my tri-fold foam board since I had so many more crayons, but it wouldn't fit into my mom's oven. And then, since I had to cut it down anyway, I went ahead and made it an even 11x14 so it'd easily fit into a standard sized frame.
The rest of the prep work was all the same as the first time: line drawn at the top for straightness, colors arranged according to Roy G Biv, crayons glued down with Crayola logo on top. When my board was all ready to go, I placed it on a cookie sheet and leaned it up against a cooking dish.
I made a little tray out of aluminum foil to catch any crazy crayon drippage.
I had no idea what temperature to set the oven to. 250 seemed like a good number to me, so that's what I went with. Into the oven it went.
Did I mention I left my camera at home? Yea, these awesome photos are comin' atcha from my iPhone.
I may or may not have squealed when I saw these two drips.
It's working! And it's working fast! The crayons started dripping just seconds after being in the oven.
It's hard not to be a cheater when it feels looks this good!
I don't know why, but this was so fascinating to me. Especially after my first failed attempt. The crayons that baked in the sun melted inside the wrapper first and most of the tips never really melted, they stayed hard. But now, in the oven, it's the tips of the crayons that were melting away. And they were all melting at what seemed to be an equal pace, regardless of their colors. So freaking awesome.
After about a minute of good dripping, I turned the oven off so it could start to cool down and the wax could harden back up. I felt like I had reached a good level of drippage.
Here's my masterpiece fresh out tha oven! It smelled delicious like wax.
I've got these pretty sweet blended smears at the top of my crayon row. This might be from me getting uber creative and putting my own twist on it, or it might be from the foam board being top heavy and flipping over backwards. Only my mom and I will know for sure.
It's a good thing I put the aluminum foil tray down at the bottom because my drips definitely made it that far and pooled up at the bottom. Truth be told, I kinda like the way it looks on the bottom, even though that will probably get covered up by the frame.
Like last time, I took a picture from the top. This time, the wrappers still had a lot of wax left in them.
I think this photo is my favorite. I love how the melted wax and blended colors look!
So there you have it. When making melted crayon art, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again just cheat and stick it in the oven. You won't regret it.