A quick, but COLORFUL post today! 🌈

(As I went back to edit this post, I realized how much it felt like a DIY blog or a recipe blog with a totally superfluous story about *why these are the best chocolate chips cookies I’ve ever made* and then super detailed step-by-step directions on how to properly mix flour and baking soda with a fine-toothed comb or something stupid like that before you even get to the recipe itself. And…I’m not apologizing for it! I’m aware of it, but I’m still publishing this post. So if you’re in it just for the metaphorical recipe, scroll to the bottom. But just in case you’re not…)

Here’s the backstory on this post: Girl Scouts were an essential part of my social life for a couple years when I was younger (so was Indian Princesses — the daddy-daughter equivalent with the most offensive name ever, so we’re just not going to talk about that experience for now).

My mom had been a Girl Scout and a Girl Scout Leader before I was born, and she hoped that I would enjoy it as much as she did. Which I did for a while, but quit once I graduated from elementary school to middle school.

I’m not really sure if these photos are from my Girl Scout days,

but I’m just really digging the color palette of my clothes as a kid. This post is all about colors!

That being said, many of the activities that I did as a Girl Scout show up on my list because they were creative and memorable and just so darn fun! Some of the ones that I remember most were making homemade paper, putting together a troop cook book, making root beer from scratch, and creating melted crayon art.

If you’re not familiar with that last one, you literally just melt crayons to create art! Back then, we did it using an electric griddle, one of those big flat ones that my grandma would make pumpkin pancakes on the day after Thanksgiving.

My grandma’s griddle was glass and somehow always made the pancakes taste better than any other pancakes.

You would heat the griddle up, put a piece of paper or tin foil on the top of it, and then sprinkle crayon shavings or larger chunks of crayon on top. The crayons would melt, spread out, and create unique and beautiful art. Simple as that!

I remember being mesmerized by the patterns that would appear as the crayons fused together, swirling and mixing them with a toothpick as they melted. It was always a challenge to let them cool completely before admiring my work, and it was sometimes equally fun to destroy them than it was to make them by slowly picking away at the edges, using the art as a crayon once again to draw something else. The ultimate piece of reusable artwork.

This time around, I went with a more “adult” approach to crayon art. The approach that DIY art folks take. It involved gluing crayons to canvas and melting them with a hairdryer. The colors that would spill downwards would mix and mingle to create a totally unique (and somehow more adult) work of art.

I got together the materials and started to remove the paper wrappers from the crayons. I chose a color palette of mainly pinks and oranges with some blue and yellow highlights. In case you were wondering 😇

During this process I learned a couple completely useless things that I am going to share with you — “Carnation Pink” is the most waxy of colors and therefore was the most difficult crayon to remove the wrapper. Alternatively, good old “Yellow” was the easiest to remove. Honestly, it was orgasmically rewarding when a wrapper came off in one piece (only happened 5 times with 62 crayons 😓).

…in case you don’t remember what crayons look like.

Then came the fun part.

I super-glued the naked crayons onto a canvas. Using my $15 hairdryer from CVS that lives in my guest room bathroom closet (I don’t ever dry my hair), I got to work melting those little bad boys. The results were pretty much amazing.

I had seen some of these online that had left white space from the canvas peeking through, but as I was melting the crayons more and more, I decided that I wanted the whole thing covered.

I think it turned out phenomenally 👩‍🎨

The final work of art! Currently hanging on a yellow wall in my bedroom, but probably could be featured at MOMA, imho.

The final piece as a whole is stunning (if I do say so myself), but there are certain sections of it that bring me infinite joy.

and the contrasting colors, specifically the yellows,

Y’all, I consider myself to be creative because I’m a writer, not because I’m a visual artist. I have made other attempts at painting on canvas, drawing, and watercoloring. All pretty epic failures, in my opinion.

But this legit felt like a creative accomplishment. I created something colorful and bold and vibrant — all of the words that I want to be described as. I am proud to showcase this canvas on one of my walls instead of hiding it in the laundry room like I did with my self-portrait (😭). And that’s a big deal.

The colors from this canvas inspired me to include more colors into my life: I’m currently emptying out my closet and filling it with more colorful items (I’ll write about this soon). I’m updating my living room — getting rid of our old, basic, gray couches from IKEA and moving in a beautiful cobalt blue sofa with pink and yellow pillows and an equally vibrant rug. And I’m getting my hair re-dyed that beautiful raspberry color that you see in my profile photo that I haven’t had for about 6 months.

BRING ON THE COLOR.

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