Faux Enamel: Melted Metallic Crayon Technique Tutorial

By: Jacquie HeffnerAfterHoursStamper.com

I love to come up with techniques that give a card a "wow" factor, are not too hard to do, are not too time consuming, and use materials that are on hand or easily acquired.

So, the tutorial for this week will help you to create a really cool embellishment for your card using your stamps, some old crayons, and a few other items. The heart in the card below was made using this technique, and pictures do not do it justice, you really have to see the end result in person to see the color and sparkle.

Here is a close up of the background before adding a rubber stamped image, shows you the glitter and wonderful effects.

Supplies you will need:

Heat GunWax PaperMetallic CrayonsRegular CrayonsPencil sharpenerWhite card stockDesigner PaperCrystal Lacquer (or any other type of clear finish)Rubber stamp (with empty space in the design)Black Ink PadHeat resistant surface (I used my craft sheet)

Step 1: (make sure to have a heat protected surface for this technique, I use my craft sheet)

Cut your piece of card stock in half, and then cut a piece of wax paper a little bit more then double the size of your card stock. You want enough wax paper to cover the bottom and top of your cardstock.

Place your cardstock on half of the wax paper; leave the other side open for now.

Crayons:

I use both regular and metallic crayons, the gold and silver" regular" crayon will give you some amazing results.

I match the crayons to the colors in the designer paper I am using, here I have a number of colors for this tutorial, but you can use fewer colors if you like.

Use just two colors and then add lots of the gold or silver for some really neat effects as well.

Step 2:

Now start to sharpen your crayons over your card stock, you want shavings of the crayon spread all over the paper, here I have started with green, but it really doesn't matter what color you start with.

And here is a picture of all the shavings and the crayons I used.

Make sure to get a good layer of shavings down, but if there is still some white space at this point don't worry.

Now, fold over your wax paper and smash the paper down on the shavings, you want to flatten out the shavings.

This is how your shavings look after you do the "smash."

In the next step you will need your heat gun and a paper shim of some sort.

Step 3:

Get your heat gun out, turn it on and start to apply heat to the wax paper, the crayon will melt, keep the heat gun moving as you melt the crayon.

This is how the crayon will look as it melts.

If you want you can move the melted crayon around if you take a shim of paper and push the hot crayon (be careful because the crayon will be hot, I use the paper shim right after I finish heating to move color to any white areas.

Here is a picture of the finished melted crayon. If you want to still "push" the color around a bit you can apply more heat to the melted crayon directly, see the next picture.

Do not throw the wax paper away, I use it for cards, makes a very interesting background

Here is a picture showing how you can heat the crayon directly and then push the color around with the force of the heat gun.

Step 4:

Now, after your crayon has cooled you can add a layer of your Crystal Lacquer, I added the lacquer directly from the bottle, but you can also apply a thinner layer using a sponge type paintbrush. (Thinner layer will dry faster.

If you decide to not use a sponge brush you can push the lacquer around by using a piece of card stock to even out your layer.

This is what your background will look like when the lacquer dries. Now you can add your stamped image (if you use Memento ink you will have to wait a bit for the ink to dry for the next step, if you use Staz on your ink will dry faster)

After you have stamped your images and the ink is dry (check to make sure), add another layer of the lacquer and then let that layer dry.

Then you can cut out your stamped images!

Here are some pictures of images I did using this technique, and you should see the color in person, it really stands out.

I hope you like this tutorial, please email me (Jacquie@afterhoursstamper.com) if you have any questions.