Month of the Military Child Melted Crayon Art

During our exceptionally long transition of an OCONUS to CONUS PCS a few years ago, we stayed in several hotels while traveling and vacationing, then a temporary apartment while waiting to close on our house. Needless to say, we had to eat out often. Restaurants always provided our children with kids’ menus, along with a couple of crayons to go with each. After completing their meals, my children loved taking the crayons, and sometimes their menus, with them.

They liked to color more in the van as we traveled or bring them back to the hotel to work on there. Sometimes, I preferred they didn’t bring their crayons, as they were greasy or sticky from food, or we’d later find melted crayons in their car seats and cupholders (Not a fun cleanup, by the way!). They would also get attached to their overused, crumpled menus and never want us to throw them away. They were so proud of their word searches and doodles! I was proud, too, but would sneakily throw the menus away after a few days!

Is this a familiar theme in your family? Maybe it’s just us!

Once we settled into our new home, I realized how many extra crayons we collected. I started looking through them, noticing the names of the restaurants on a few, comparing colors, sizes, and styles. It was a fun, little, unique collection of crayons, evidencing the places we had been and the roads we had traveled. I decided to keep some of them myself and make a little project out of them.

It may be silly to get sentimental over crayons, but they remind me of our military life adventures. They offer a memory for my sweet, little Army brats, to see where they were and how far they’ve come. These crayons represent my children’s resiliency—their ability to endure long, difficult transitions and be ready for the next adventure. One or two crayons and a kid’s menu at a time.

I’m so very proud of my children, and all the military children who serve alongside of their parents, as they soldier on through the never-ending changes and uncertainty and become profoundly stronger because of it.

With April being Month of the Military Child, I wanted to share my little crayon project that I only now finally completed. As you and your children go through similar transitions, maybe you will want to turn those crayon collections into a sentimental work of art as well!

Materials:

Canvas; size dependent upon your project

Crayons; I kept the paper covers on to remember the places we had been, but you can also remove the wrappers

Glue gun

Poem or picture; there are many ways to do this, but I used vinyl cut from a Cricut

Hair Dryer

Paper to cover work space

My original idea was to use the Dr. Seuss quote “Oh, the places you’ll go!” and find a nice graphic of a blue and green globe to go with it. However, my fellow military spouse friend, Chasity, who was helping me with her Cricut, helped me brainstorm something better. We found a rendition of the popular military kids quote from Diane Townsend Davis, which reads: “The children of the military are blown to all the corners of the world…” and paired it with a beautiful globe of hearts graphic. We used the second part of the quote “…and they can bloom anywhere!” and paired it with a wind-blown dandelion (the flower of the military child). Finally, we included purple in the vinyl overlays, as this is the color that represents military children.

Sidenote: Do you know why the color purple is used? I didn’t know until recently, and I think it’s genius! If you mix all the colors associated with all the branches of the military, you will create the color purple (Air Force blue, Army green, Coast Guard blue, Marine Corps red, and Navy blue)!

How unifying and beautiful!

Directions:

1. Hot glue your crayons onto your canvas.

Line them up in whichever order you like, with wrappers on or off according to your preference.

2. Add your words and/or graphics.

It’s a beautiful look to have the crayons drip through your graphics. However, I had some small details in mine and several little words that if the crayons dripped too thick through them, we wouldn’t have been able to see it all clearly. Rather than applying the graphics after melting the crayons and risk bumpy surfaces where the vinyl wouldn’t stick, I applied the vinyl first. I then covered that area with paper, and hot glue around the edges to seal it.

3. Cover your surface with some of that good ‘ol leftover moving paper.

4. Blow dry the crayons until they start melting and drip down the canvas.

Go slow and steady until you see how the crayons melt. Thicker crayons will obviously take longer to melt, and depending on what the different types are made of some will melt faster than others and even slip out of wrappers. Be cautious as sometimes the wax splatters as it blows; wear an apron and watch the surfaces around you.

5. Lay flat to let dry completely.

6. Remove paper covers and hot glue over graphics if necessary.

Soooo, this turned out to be more of an experiment for me, hahaha! The first canvas I melted crayons on was the dandelion one. As you can see, the crayons leaked through my protective paper and glue and made my graphic become blotchy and ugly. Also, this canvas has one black crayon, and that does not look great melted with the others. Luckily, I had not already glued any black crayons on the canvas with the globe, and I later added another barrier of hot glue around the edges, making sure my protective cover was sealed well. I waited longer for everything to dry and set before peeling off the paper and glue, and it all came off much easier. As you can see, there were only a couple of minor blotches.

And there you have it! A fairly simple project that helps you use up your crayons and keeps your military children’s memories of PCSing alive. May God bless all of our precious military children as they continue this journey with us, and I thank them, as well, for their service to our beautiful country!

If you have made a similar project, please let me know about it in the comments. Or, if you try this one, I’d love to hear about it too. Maybe you have some better tips and tricks for melted crayon art!

You may also enjoy A Military Child Manifesto, Sticks and Stones – I’m a Military Brat!, and Brat Like a Boss.