Monogrammed Crayon Art

It's been a while since I've done any playroom updating.  But I've always intended to do something with all the blank wall space.  Something colorful.  Fun to look at.  And reusable.  (Maybe in the big-kid bedrooms one day, or in my classroom/office once I go back to work, who knows... maybe even in our hallway photo gallery that I just realized I've never blogged about!)  Here's the little update that I decided to tackle first:

(Notes:  It's more striking in the daylight.  But this shot is the best I can do at night, with no overhead light.  The white frame and matting are much crisper in reality.  And they crayons create a real prism effect, not so much the muddled colors shown here.)

I had a large frame from Ikea (with matting) on hand, and though it wasn't a shadow box it was big enough to accommodate the crayons.  What I didn't have was a bunch of small-sized crayons and white scrapbook paper that matched the shade of white in the frame.   A quick trip to A. C. Moore fixed that!  I cut the backer to size and from there I basically followed this tutorial, only changing a few things.

I first tried clear Elmer's, but quickly decided it was taking too long to dry.  Plus it was hard to line up more than one crayon at a time.  So I switched to super glue.  Instant results, no hot-glue strings, WIN!  Also, I tried in vain to plan out how the crayons would look but ended up just starting on the first few lines and going from there.  Also, we have really good kitchen knives and they worked just fine for crayon cutting.

Just don't look too hard at my mistakes.  The "Z" is centered a little too low in the frame.  Not sure if it was my late night crafting or the fact that I had to add an additional row of a few colors at the last minute to make it all look right...  There are also some rough and uneven edges, but on the whole it was a great start to making the playroom walls look a little snazzier.  I added a little color on the cheap, created some art that I can use for years to come, and ended up with a bunch of fun crayon colors left over for the kids to explore!