Boo! Halloween is practically upon us. Have some pumpkins that still need some festive decorating? Well, you’re in luck! Melted crayon pumpkins are a fun, family-friendly, and coloring-related craft that uses materials you probably already have around your house!
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What You’ll Need
- 1 white or orange pumpkin (both look great!)
- Crayons (I used Crayola’s Runny Rainbow, but any crayons work!)
- Glue
- Hairdryer
- A box slightly larger and taller than your pumpkin (optional)
How to Make Your Melted Crayon Pumpkin
1. Glue the crayons around the stem of the pumpkin.
There are a few options for this. I used a hot glue gun, which worked pretty well on most of my colors, but for whatever reason the darker colors (indigo and purple) kept melting from the hot glue before I could attach them! I finally got around this by melting the end of my purple crayon with the hairdryer and sticking it to the pumpkin.
If you have the foresight to do this a few hours ahead of time, you can use something like superglue, which needs longer to set but won’t melt the crayons.
Either way, you can attach the whole crayon to the pumpkin — this just gives you more wax to melt later.
2. Carefully place the pumpkin into the box.
The box is optional, but trust me, it sure makes this craft a lot less messy! Once the wax gets going, you’ll be surprised in just how many directions it can shoot. Here’s a picture of the bottom of the box I made mine in:
Yeah. I’d rather have that in a cardboard box than on my floor, my table, my wall, my porch…
3. Melt the crayons!
Fair warning: melting the crayons (even though I was using Runny Rainbow crayons, which are formulated for melting) takes longer than you’d expect! It takes a while for the wax to soften.
My strategy was to start on one side and focus on softening two or three crayons at once. Make sure you are pointing the hair dryer down and towards your pumpkin; down and away from the pumpkin is just going to blow wax into the side of the box.
I noticed that as I heated the crayons, they would start to bend down around the curve of the pumpkin. I tried to encourage this, so that I’d have more wax to work with (since I wanted it to melt down the sides instead of staying at the top). I also tried to avoid colors pooling heavily at the top, because I didn’t want to end up with a thick glob of brown at the top of my pumpkin!
Once the wax starts melting, the box will send warm air around the other sides of the pumpkin, helping the melting process. Keep melting until you’ve got nice melted streaks down the sides of the pumpkin. Remember that the box makes it easy to rotate your pumpkin to get a better aim on the other side.
4. Let your pumpkin cool.
It will take some time for the wax to cool; I would definitely give it at least an hour.
Then, you can lift your pumpkin up out of the box and enjoy!
Want more coloring craft ideas? Check out my list of things to do with your colored pages here!
Tried this. Looks easy. Not so much. All colors of crayons melted out of the glue.
Frustrating….
It’s not quite as easy as it looks!