Crayon Batik {Tutorial}

Originally published at Confessions of a Seamstress as a guest post.

Today I'm going to teach you how to dye fabric using crayons! You can make something like this:

It all began with Ukrainian eggs! A couple of months ago, I was excitedly talking to my art teacher about pysanky, in which eggshells are decorated with bright dyes using a wax-resist technique. This made her remember a project that she did in art school: batik.

Those of you who frequent fabric stores might recognize that word. The really pretty, brilliantly colored fabrics with intricate designs at around $15 a yard? Yup. Those are imitation batik fabrics. Traditional batik is even more expensive because of the ardourous handmade process. A swath of fabric is dyed in a light color, and then beeswax designs are drawn onto the fabric by hand to "lock in" the light color. The fabric is then dipped in a darker color and waxed again, and the process is repeated many times before the dye is allowed to set and the beeswax is removed.

Just as I made Sharpie Easter eggs because I didn't have the tools for pysanky, we figured out how to "cheat" at batik using crayons! (It's not an original idea-- I had seen it done once before on a blog called Suzy's Artsy-Craftsy Sitcom).

This is definitely a do-and-learn project. If you attempt it and have any tips for me, please share!

DIY Crayon Batik

Supplies

Crayons (the perfect way to use up that old box of broken crayons-- my family had two shoeboxes full, but we only used half a box in art class, shared between six or seven batik projects)
Muffin pan (mini muffin pan recommended for lots of colors/mixing)
Heating tray or oven
White cotton fabric
Cold water dye (hot water will melt the wax) and gloves
Cheapie paintbrushes
Iron
Newspaper

Now, the whole idea is that you paint the crayon wax onto the material, crumple it, spray the black dye into the cracks in the wax, and iron the wax off the material. The dye from the crayon will remain, all pretty and bespeckled with the black dye.

And as a bonus, you get these weird flat crayon discs.

I've all sorts of pictures to help you along. :)

Start by peeling the crayons and putting them in a muffin pan. Melt them on a heating tray (or in the oven-- beware that they will cool quickly in that case). Then prepare your design on the cotton with a pencil.

(At this point I'm going to point out that my Celtic knot is not a real knot because I made several mistakes in the over-under pattern!)

front

back

Use cheap paintbrushes to paint the melted crayon onto the cotton (the paintbrushes will be ruined). Once the wax is on, there is no getting it off-- so be careful! Start with the main design first.

Make sure that the crayon has completely permeated the material. I set the cotton on the heating tray between each color to make sure that the dyes really "set."

This is important! We ruined our first attempts because crayon cools quickly and cool wax just sits on top of the fabric. The color didn't set.

(Melt the most important colors first so they don't bleed together badly).

Front

Back-- notice how very little of the yellow actually permeated the material?

Continue this process until the entire piece is covered with crayon.

This was my first project, a pseudo "Dan-Cheong" based off a Korean style of architectural painting.
 I did not heat the material between colors. Instead, I melted everything all at once and made the colors run together.
Be sure to melt the wax between each color and pay attention because you don't want the colors to run together.

Both of these pictures show crayon batiks by the younger kids. You can see a few of them whose colors ran together. As always, click to enlarge.

Then wrinkle it up!

Every time you wrinkle the fabric, it creates cracks for the black dye to seep into. Don't wrinkle too much or else your final piece will be almost completely black. (Yes, another thing learned the hard way.)

This is my teacher's first project; she crinkled the fabric too much and dipped the material in the dye, rather than spraying the dye. You can barely see the hot air balloons.

Spray the dye onto the material and let it set as per label instructions.

We based this project off of Suzy's and took her advice about cold water dye. You certainly do not want hot water melting your crayon artwork into a big blob!

Next, place the material between layers of newspaper and heat the iron to the highest setting.

Iron the wax out of the cotton.

This is a tedious process. DON'T keep ironing after the wax is showing through the newspaper or you will do what I did and re-melt the wax back into the material, creating a big mess and making colors run. Change the newspaper several times a minute.

Yes, you'll go through a lot of newspaper.

Iron until the fabric loses its stiffness. Rub the material with a paper towel. If no color rubs off, you are good to go.

I haven't tried putting this through the wash. I figure that as long as no color rubs off, it isn't going to stain anything!

Do whatever you want with your handmade art fabric! I turned mine into a decorative pillow, proving that I cannot sew a straight line (it's horribly loppy!). Now my Celtic-knot obsession gets to live on my bed! It even matches my curtains. :)

Enjoy!

Decorative Fan Pull {Tutorial}

Why doesn't love to add that little extra touch of sparkle to their room?

(Please tell me I'm not the only one).

A few months back, I made a decorative fan pull. It adds just a little sprinkle of beauty...

YOU WILL NEED

-a fan with pulls (or an old fashioned lightbulb with a string pull)

-pretty beads

-wire

-pliers

-lobster clasps

cost: less than $5 for all new supplies, assuming you already have a fan

Start with boring old fan pulls (or outright missing fan pulls; one of mine broke off). Take them off.

Make a string of beads. If you want, you can literally use string. I made my strand of beads using a very simple wirewrapping technique.

One end of the strand should have a lobster clasp; the other should have about two inches of loose string attached to it.

Wrap that loose wire around the top part of the fan pull (the part that doesn't come out when you take the old pull off).

Use the lobster clasps to hang your favorite doodads!

Since I am big on making my room look Elvish, I hung my plastic Evenstar necklace on it. Now that I make my own jewelry I rarely wear it, but it is too geeky cool to leave inside a jewelry box.

Go crazy-- you can hang anything on these pulls! Necklace pendants, beads, gears, random objects...

Check out more of my DIY home decor, crafty bedroom decorating, and tutorials.

Book Clock {Tutorial}

For someone who is as obsessed with books, like I am, you can't beat this piece of time-telling art.

It has graced my bedroom for months, showing off my bookishness, geekiness, and craftiness (and all of that adds up to awesomeness, yes? lol, now I sound like my brothers).

You can see more of my Destroyable Book projects {here}, and more of my DIY bedroom decorating {here}.

You will need:

• a Destroyable Book
• and Xacto or utility knife
• a clock movement (buy one from the store or gut an old clock)
• Mod Podge or other glue

This tutorial will be mostly pictorial, since much of it is quite redundant to the Secret Book Box that I made recently. If you are confused about any step, please refer to the post on how to make a hollow book, or leave a comment.

Gather your materials

Figure out where you want the clock to be situated.

The next few pictures show me hollowing out a hole in the book. These are the same steps used to create the Secret Book Box. In just a few words, I cover the cover and a few pages with plastic (from a shopping bag), glue the edges of the book pages together, and use an X-acto knife to cut out the hole.

(You also have the option of gluing after you have cut out the hollow portion. You can glue from the inside of  of the book so that from the outside, the book doesn't look like it has any glue on it.)

If the pictures didn't make sense, the instructions for making a hollow book are {here}.

Note: I had some difficulty aligning my clock with my hole, as you will see. If you run into this problem, you can simply make the hole larger to allow more wiggle room. No one said that the hole has to be the size and shape of your clock movement!

Make a hole where the clock hands will go. I did this without any fancy tools; just lots of muscle, a stray nail to poke the hole, and a pencil to enlarge it.

The next few photos show how I "cleaned up" the hollow part of the book:

At this point, I realized that the hole in the cover, the hollow part of the book, and the clock movement did not line up. Ooops.

Rather than cut out more of the book to scoot the clock movement over to the right by a few centimenters, I just made the hole in the cover bigger.

You won't believe how long it took me to figure out how to screw the clock movement together! I was having a totally "duh" day... In case any of you are having such a day, here is a photo to show you how it is done. :)

Because I had to adjust the size of my hole, it was too big and did not look very handsome. I decided to cover it up-- I just used a paper punch to punch out a page from the book.

Ta-dah! A finished Book Clock!

As you can see here, I added some brown paint to the clock hands. It helps them stand out more from a distance.

I might be something of an anomaly as far as sixteen year old girls go-- I can actually tell time on an analog clock without any problem.

However, if you want to mark off the numbers on the clock, feel free to!

You can use those flat thumbtacks (if you get the white ones, you can even decorate them with Sharpies). You could use number stickers.... miniature paper mustaches.... whatever you want!

P.S. Were you inspired to make something using the tutorial? Please leave a comment, I'd love to see it!