Second Thursday Tutorial: Who can resist crayons?

It's the second Thursday of the month and time for my monthly tutorial.  It's also back to school time at Art Journal Journey, and what screams "back to school" more than crayons.

So today let's get all those crayons out and find some useful ways to use them in our mixed media art, altered books, or art journals.

As I was cleaning water logged (from my recent flood) containers in the basement, I pulled out box after box of crayons, mostly Crayola brand.  The boxes were all wet, but the crayons weren't damaged.  I threw all the soggy paper boxes away and was left with all these crayons.  It may not look like it, but there are well over 200 never-before-used crayons in that makeshift container.

Like most of my second Thursday tutorials, I had a vague idea what I wanted to achieve, but no real plan.  So I grabbed some watercolor paper.

Size, finish, and weight are shown on the cover.  I didn't even have to convert anything!

Although the paper was 9 X 12 inches, I cut it down to 8.5 X 11 inches (21,59 X 27,94 centimeters).  I was gifted with this home made foam stamp, and thought it would be perfect for what I hoped to accomplish.

I used Staz-on as my ink of choice because it is waterproof.  Now lots of people would be able to draw something like this, but I have trouble just getting the stamp to work, so I was lucky these came out as legible as they did.

Some crayons shed their protective wraps better and quicker than others.  Even the ones that got very wet and disgusting looking often refused to give up their wrap if they were Crayola brand.  I finally got all the wraps off and was ready to light a fire under my ideas.

Not as good as I expected or hoped, but I was satisfied with how the swirls turned out.  That is, until I spilled wet wax on the watercolor paper when I put the fire out and started to move the tea light candle.

Next I decided to go for a bit of texture.

The texture was underneath the paper, but the lines were so minuscule,

the texture wasn't apparent.

I decided to show these colors with their wraps still intact or partially intact.  It's amazing what dirty water does to paper, even paper that sticks like this wrapper did.

The colors were acceptable on the swirls, though.  It was obvious I was using cold press paper, because of the bumps and texture already in the paper.

It was time to switch gears and create a bit of resist.

Instead of spritzing the handmade shimmering mist on the page, I decided to paint it on around the swirls.  I'm not sure how much resistance I have created, but it was fun seeing how the mica infused mist backed away from the crayons.

This was gifted me, so I decided to use it as a rubbing instrument.  If you have die cutting machines and embossing folders, the embossing folders would work great.  In lieu of that, anything that has high and low spots can be used as a rubbing.

Some colors, mostly dark, work better than others.

Spritzing shimmering mist adds a different dimension, as well as a nice resist to the tag.

I make no secret of the fact I can't draw.  But I tried to draw this apple in crayon.  To make sure the viewer would recognize that it was an apple, I drew an A in the center using the Sgraffito technique, where I scratched the letter in the crayon using the sharp end of my paint brush.

The longer I melted the crayon wax, the more the A disappeared.  If using the Sgraffito technique, melting wax is probably not the best way to go.

Now it was time to put all these projects together to see if I had actually created something mixed media out of a product most children prefer.


At this point, I have yet to glue the pieces in place, but couldn't help adding a bit of humor to the mix.  After all, I used a lot of heat to create this piece.

Of course, it looks much different on my scanner.  After I began laying everything in place, I saw this old postage stamp that looked like the lines had been drawn through.  I remember the first time I saw this woman I thought she looked like a spinster teacher I had in high school.  What a difference between the one who is hot and the one who is not.

It was fun creating my Second Thursday Tutorial this month, even though many of the projects I worked on didn't turn out as I expected.  Instead, I got a great page for Art Journal Journey, honored teachers, and used instruments usually preferred by children.  

Thanks for joining Bleubeard and me for this tutorial.  As soon as it goes live, I will add it to my tutorials page under "Who can resist crayons?"

And please visit Art Journal Journey where the prompt this month is Back to School.