Crayon Monogram

I found this great idea on several blogs and thought I'd give it a try! I had a hard time finding a step by step tutorial so I just jumped in. I took some shots along the way, so maybe it'll help someone else make the same thing.

First you'll need a piece of cardstock, a template for your letter of choice, 2-3 boxes of crayons (depending on your letter and the size), a shadow box, hot glue gun, adhesive for the cardstock, a cutting board and a knife. Oh, have an old towel on hand, too.

Before you start, go ahead and stick your crayons in the freezer. I know this sounds crazy but my friend Virginia suggested this and it helped so so much!!

Print your letter out in your favorite font. Keep in mind the size of your shadow box and make sure your letter will fit inside. A simple block/basic font is the easiest. Cut your letter out and trace it lightly on your cardstock. I even went back and erased lots of my tracing so nothing would show up in my final project.



I took my template and just eyeballed the size of the crayon pieces I would need. Cut your crayons to your desired lengths and then hot glue in place.

To cut your crayons, you'll want to take them out of the freezer and dump them on your workspace - I worked next to my kitchen sink, with a smaller cutting board on top of an old dishtowel. Then I let my tap water get super hot and just left it running while I cut the crayons.

Run your knife under the hot water for a few moments and dry off quickly and cut your crayon. I only had to saw back and forth a little bit before the crayon just popped in half. I got a super clean cut this way. Before I tried the hot knife/cold crayon approach, I just cut each crayon with a regular knife (from an old set of kitchen knives), on the cutting board. You can see here the difference between the two types of cutting:

regular cutting:



hot/cold method:



So, here's the difference between the two ways - the regular old saw it with a knife way left me with rough edges and a mess on my cutting board. This meant there were bits and flakes on the crayon itself on the cutting board. That meant the little bits and pieces stuck to my crayon and just made a mess.

The hot/cold method left behind almost no little bits and pieces - so those crayons just looked a ton better!! I know you can't tell much in my photos above - but believe me, the hot knife and frozen crayons worked so so much better!

Okay - back to details. Once you have all your crayons glued down, go ahead and trim your cardstock to match the backing to the shadow box. I applied adhesive to the edges and through the middle of the backing and placed my finished cardstock on top. I wanted to write the teachers name but you could print it if you wanted on your cardstock first.



So here's the finished project:



I really hope she likes it!! I'll show you all her other goodies tomorrow!! Lots of fun stuff personalized just for her!