Crayon Fun

I wanted to do a tutorial for those of you who were wanting to try encaustic art this year. But, I wanted to do something really simple that would give you a "taste" of working with wax, without the investment. That way, you can see how you and the wax feel about each other. Also, I wanted to incorporate some stitching if I could, so those of you who are chomping at the bit to dust off your sewing machines and try some new projects, well, that also.

So, here is what I have come up with. Crayon and stitching. You will see some of the fun and some of the drawbacks of working with wax, while working with the least expensive wax there is--children's crayons.

You will need an iron to do this. Don't of course use your iron that you use for your clothing cause the iron will never, ever be the same again. That wax finds every little bitty crack and cranny and gets in there. And yes, it does tend to reappear later. So, if you don't have a craft iron, well, maybe your Goodwill or SalvationArmy store has one, cheap. And, you do need a sewing machine to do this project, but your sewing machine will not suffer. The crayon paper sews through very very easily.

So, you need:

Paper (I just used a piece of paper from a Sketch pad)
sewing machine
thread
cardstock
rubber stamps
Crayola crayons (I love, love, love the metallic ones and the gel ones and used these in this project as well as just regular blue colors)
a craft iron
now this is tricky if you don't sew--you need some iron on fusible interfacing
craft glue or gel medium
Either Fluid Chalk inkpad in Blackbird color, or you can use Black Stazon inkpad

So, here we go to make a Hugs card.

First, take your crayons and one at a time, just scribble across the paper randomly in what I call chunks. You need to leave quite a bit of wax down so don't be picky, just get down some color areas.



Next, pick out some stamps that you love and stamp the paper randomly. I used Colorbox Fluid Chalk Inkpad in Blackbird color. But, you can also use black Stazon inkpad. It just isn't quite as sharp on the crayon.




Cut your crayon paper into random pieces. You might want to cut some smaller than others, cut different shapes. Lay them out on the fusible interfacing and iron them onto the interfacing with the craft iron. You might want to measure a piece of interfacing the size of your card front so that you won't make a lot of extra and you can see pretty much how the finished card is going to look. Now......why didn't we just glue the pieces down on the card. Well, that is the thing about wax. It doesn't stick to anything but other wax and then it has to be fused to that layer underneath. Ahhhh, the #1 lesson about encaustics. Wax is onery about who it associates with. So, by fusing it to the interfacing, you have trapped the wax and when we are finished stitching, you can just glue the interfacing to your card. No wax touching your card.





Once all of your pieces are fused down to the interfacing, take it to your sewing machine and zig zag stitch around all the pieces. You don't have to be careful. And, you can pull those extra threads to the back when you are finished sewing. Here is the front:


And, here is the back:


Cut your artwork to fit the front of your card.

Now, with a straight stitch, be sure to stitch all the way around the crayon art. Don't skip this. If you do, the interfacing where there is no zig zag stitching will pull away from your card later on. So, be sure to do this step.

I added a stamped image of Here's A Hug from me at this point to the artwork. Just zig zag stitched it onto the piece.




Glue with a good heavy glue or you can of course use gel medium, the artwork which is now finished to your cardfront.

OR, if you want, you can take a couple of the crayons, hold them directly to the hot craft iron and add some neat "drips" to the piece.


Finished. Hope you like it. And, oh by the way, here is a "Hug" from me.

Glenda-TwoCoolTexans