Project Day 2012-Crayon Art

Each year, our county hosts a 4-H project day to make projects for the youth to exhibit at Achievment Days and State Fair. This year, our project day was in July (I know, I should have started this sooner, but I finally got a break from being completely swamped!). This was my first year being in chrage of the WHOLE afternoon and it was really exciting! Using Pinterest I found three awesome, easy projects that youth of all ages LOVED. Each was supposed to take about an hour, but the time varied for each one. I got pictures of most of the finished products and was excited to see them earn purple ribbons at both Fairs! Below you will find a description of one of the projects we did, complete with pictures!

Crayon Art
This project is also really easy, but can get messy! You need a canvas(any size works. I used one with an open back for my sample, and the youth used solid back ones that I purchased at Michaels Craft Store. They are also available at Walmart or other craft stores. You also need something to cover the work surface, crayons, glue(hot glue works great) and a blow dryer. Here are a few pictures of our projects in progress, so you can see our set up!

We used pieces of old, used, crayons, but you could also use new ones. To start, cover your work surface with a plastic table cloth or something that is old and can get crayon wax on it. This project could get messy. To begin the project, you glue the crayons onto the canvas however you want. It can be done in a straight line across the top, a circle, randomly, etc. You can also use something else to hold down the crayons and not glue them down, but that gets very messy and requires both hands and concentration! After you get the crayons arranged, then use the blow dryer to melt the crayons. You can move the board around to move the melted crayons as well. The crayon dries rather quickly, so just use the blow dryer to heat it back up and adapt your project as you choose! It really is a great way for kids to be creative and to make their own project, as they get to choose their colors and the design they want to make. These are some pictures of finished projects from our craft day.