A new Technique/Tutorial for you: Faux Stained Glass Melted Crayon Background

I love to play with techniques, especially when I can use the supplies on hand and come up with a interesting way to create backgrounds. So, I have been playing around with a technique that I saw on SCS, melted crayons. I did not want to drag out my iron and I wanted to see what would happen if I used waxed paper instead of foil.

What I like is the result with this technique, pictures don't come close to what you will see in person. And, you can also use both the card stock and the wax paper for your back grounds!

After playing around quite a bit, this is the result:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

Here it is again with more of the entire stamped image:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

Here is a different image using the same colors for the background:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

Here is a butterfly with the brighter colors:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

The image below shows you a different background for the butterfly. It is stamped on the transparency overlapped onto the background, glued down but not yet cut out.

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

Here it is cut out, sorry about the shadow (took the picture outside):

From Outdoor images of Faux Stained glass

This next picture shows what you can do with the wax paper part of the tutorial, I stamped on the side that did not have any crayon, heat embossed with clear powder, cut the wax paper into strips and used it as a background:

From Outdoor images of Faux Stained glass

Ok, so here is the tutorial. At some point in the future I will also try to do a video for you. Let me know what you think.

Faux Stained Glass Melted Crayon Tutorial

Supplies you will need:

Rubber Stamp that has a large amount of "open area"
Staz on ink (I used black for the contrast)
Clear embossing powder
Transparency (the heat resistant type is best, but I used non heat resistant)
Crayons: any and all types. I used metallic and regular crayons
Pencil sharpener or craft knife
Mica powder: I used Pearl Ex because I didn't have to worry about binding
Paint brush or tooth pick
Heat embossing gun
Wax paper
Card stock: I used white card stock, do not know the brand name
Adhesive: I used a clear adhesive (which is very good) Beacon's 3 in 1 Advanced Craft Glue, as I have not tried this technique with any other adhesive I can't say how it would turn out using something else. Any crystal clear adhesive or dimensional should work fine.
Micro Glaze: Optional, I used it on one background so I could take a better picture.

Step one: Gather your supplies and figure out what colors you want to use for your background. I have two examples for you. One using metallic and regular greens, pinks, gold (for the flower) and one that used regular and metallic crayons in brighter colors: yellow, orange, red, blue, green with a very light colored gold pearl ex, for the butterfly. Decide where you want your colors. I did two butterflies, one where the yellow and oranges went from the middle out, and the other one where I decided that I wanted to turn the background so that the blues to be at the top and the yellow/orange/red to be more toward the bottom.

Cut a large enough piece of wax paper to cover both sides of your cardstock. Place the card stock on top of the wax paper, leaving enough wax paper to fold over the top of the card stock. NOTE: to protect your work area make sure you have either foil or additional paper under the wax paper as some of the wax will melt through all the layers.

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

Next, using your pencil sharpener, start to shave your crayons. Make sure to remove enough of the crayon wrapper to only be shaving the crayon. I used the larger hole of my sharpener as the smaller one did not seem to work well. NOTE: You will find that different crayons "shave" in different ways. The metallic and some softer crayons will give you bigger shavings, the harder the crayon the smaller the shavings.

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

As you can see from the above picture I decided to have lots of the green in my background so I held the sharpener a bit higher over the paper and as I shaved the crayon the crayon shavings distributed all over the paper.

Now, continue this process adding what ever colors you would like to use. In the image below I have used some regular and some metallic crayons, having added some green mettalic, regular pink and gold metallic to the first image. Even a little bit of the metallic crayons will leave a nice shimmer, experiment with how much or little you want to use of the metallics.

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

NOTE: Don't worry if you don't completely cover the card stock. As you will see, the crayon melts and will fill in some gaps, and you can also shave more crayon and repeat the process if you want to add more color.

Now you are going to add your pearl ex (or other mic powder). I did it two ways, and truthfully liked one better then the other. I used a toothpick to pick up a little bit of the powder, then sprinkled it on the paper:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

And I also dipped my brush into the mica powder and then tapped the brush over the shaved crayon:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

I preferred to use the brush because I had more control over where the powder went, you will need to experiment to see which method you use.

When applying the mica powder I tried to make sure it landed on the paper so that the crayon would melt with it and leave a shimmer.

Step Two:

Now you are going to fold the wax paper over the top of the card stock and use your heat gun to melt the crayon. NOTE: I played with this a whole lot, and there are a number of ways you can play with this part. As the crayon melts you can push it around with the heat gun, let the crayon get hot enough to sort of bubble, then use the force of the heat gun to blend the colors. OR as you are heating the crayon and it starts to melt you can use a brayer to move the color around. OR if you are VERY careful, as the wax paper will be hot, you can move the color around by pressing down on the melted crayon (I did this by using a piece of card stock to protect my fingers because it was too hot to do directly with my fingers.)

As you heat and melt the crayon you will see the crayon bubble up in some places which is fine, just play with the process until you learn how to work with the crayons while they are melting.

Here is what the process looks like as it melts:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

Here is what the process looks like after you heat and before you peel back the wax paper (it looks messier then it really is):

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

Here is what it looks like when you peel back the wax paper:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

After everything is melted, peel back the wax paper and see if you want more color or mica powder added. In the picture below I added some more shavings after the first melt:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

Here is the background after being melted for a second time:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

Here I added some Micro Glaze over the crayon to bring out the colors for the camera:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

Oh, and remember that wax paper? Don't throw it away! You can use it for a background as well!

Here is a picture of the wax paper on top of some colored card stock to give you an idea of how it could be used:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

Step Three:

This was the part that gave me the most trouble as I wasn't sure how stamping directly on the background would turn out. So I experimented by stamping directly on the background, the wax paper and the transparency.

They all look good, just give you different results.

Here is a comparison:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

When you stamp directly on the background the image is not as clear and crisp, additionally if you emboss the image you will find that the image starts to blur as the heat gun also starts to melt the crayon underneath.

I really preferred the results with the transparency, the colors came alive.

To stamp on the transparency: Make sure to go over the transparency with a anti static bag. CAREFULLY stamp your image (the transparency is slick and your image will move around if you are not careful), immediately cover with clear embossing powder. If you are using a transparency that is not heat resistant you will need to heat it carefully. I give the image a bit of heat, pull back, then add some more heat, and I continue doing that until the image is embossed. Just take your time, and you will be fine.

Now you can play with your image and the background, decide exactly what part of the background you want to use. When you know where you want your image to go, turn the transparency over and add your crystal clear adhesive to the ENTIRE image (you want to make sure you coat it well), lay down the image and press to make sure it adheres. I also used my brayer at this point to make sure the glue covered the entire image.

When the glue is done, cut out your image and hold it up to the light, you will be amazed at the colors you see!

Here are some more pictures of the process, this time showing how I did the butterfly background. The first picture shows the colors I used.

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

The following picture shows adding the mica powder:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

Here is an image as the crayon is melting:

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

And this is what it looked like when I was finished.

From Crayon Stained Glass Double Background Technique

Here is a card I made with the green/gold flower (haven't yet made cards with the butterflies):

From Outdoor images of Faux Stained glass

Hope you like this tutorial, sorry it is long, but I wanted to make it as clear as possible for you.

Have a fabulous day!