This DIY motorcycle melted crayon art is fun and easy to make- perfect for the motorcycle rider in your life!
Way back, a long time ago (as in like, 2012), when this DIY blog was just a baby, I made some DIY melted crayon art, and I shared it on the blog. It’s actually probably one of my favorite DIY crafts that I’ve ever made. I put it in my daughter’s room, and I hope that all the different colors perk her imagination. Later down the road, once she knows how to read, I hope the “Create” inspires her to follow her dreams. The DIY crayon art is also a favorite of a friend of mine. In my old house, the “Create” art was in a more prominent area, and every time he came over, he would comment on how much he loved it.
So I decided to do another DIY crayon creation and give it to him as a gift. This crayon art is pretty different than my last DIY project. For starters, the last DIY crayon creation had all of the colors of the rainbow. Because my friend’s favorite color is blue, this DIY project consists mainly of blue crayons, with a few green and purple crayons sprinkled in for a little variety.
For the “canvas” part of this DIY project, I just used a piece of scrap ply wood that I had left over from another project. I white washed it with some watered down white acrylic paint to serve as my base.
As with the last DIY crayon project, I only used Crayola crayons. I think I would be open to using another brand of crayons, but because I already had a lot of Crayolas already on hand, I decided to go with those. While I do think any brand of crayon works for this type of DIY art project, I do think you need to use all the same type of crayon. I know a lot of crayon brands use different ratios of wax and other ingredients, so I think it’s important to use all the same brand to maintain a good melting consistency.
When melting the crayons, I always glue the crayons onto the canvas first, using E6000 glue. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I absolutely love E6000 for any and all DIY projects. They don’t pay me to say that, I just really think it’s a great product. To melt the crayons, I just use a regular hair dryer. I’m sure a more professional DIY-er would use a heat gun, but because I do this sort of DIY project so rarely, I can’t justify buying one. If you’re going to use a hair dryer, just remember that it DOES blow out air in different directions, so beware of where all that melted crayon wax is going.
I wanted to incorporate one of my friend’s passions, which is riding motorcycles. I have seen a lot of different ideas for melted crayon art, but I’ve never seen one with a motorcycle, so I kind of just had to wing it for that part. I guess that’s just even more of the DIY spirit, right?
So I just DIY’d the heck out of it. I found an image of a rider on a motorcycle and I printed it out. I then cut it out and traced it onto the canvas. I wanted to make it look like the dude was racing his motorcycle over bumpy terrain.
Just because of the texture of the canvas, and my bad tracing skills, I kind of ended up free-hand drawing the rider/motorcycle. It was a little more DIY than I would have liked, but I think it still turned out looking pretty good.
I painted the image with a navy blue acrylic paint, and re-painted a few more coats. I also added his favorite quote to the DIY project. I created the quote with a cool-looking font, and then had the image printed onto metal. There are a few different photo services that will print stuff onto metal for you, including Costco, but I actually found that Walgreens offered the best size and pricing options. (Note: the quote may look a little weird on my pictures because when I asked my friend if I could put his DIY present on the site, he asked that I change out the quote. It was a very personal quote for him, so I had no problem putting something else on there [although it still seems like a very appropriate quote for the piece]).
I hope this DIY melted crayon art provided a bit of inspiration to you. I just love the way that DIY melted crayon projects look, and I foresee that I will be doing many more in the future!
As I mentioned before, there are a ton of really fun DIY ideas for melted crayon art projects. My Purple Patch DIY Pinterest board has a lot of cool pins. A few other ideas for DIY melted crayon projects are here: