How to make Batik Fabric with Crayons

The crayons should take about 5 minutes to melt. Don’t worry- it doesn’t stink up the kitchen. Actually, this part was rather easy to do.

Edit: One of my readers suggested using candle melting plates which might work even better to keep the wax melted while painting.  

Lay your fabric on aluminum foil to prevent the wax from going through to your counter. Start a small pan of boiling water to use to clean your brushes as you go. I used very inexpensive brushes for this project as I was planning to throw them away afterward.

Dip your brush in the melted wax and then start painting away! (Suggested clean up for this part of the project- I threw away the brushes, and the hardened wax was easy to pop out of the muffin tin for future use.

Any residue in the pan can be re-melted in the oven for a minute or two and then wiped away). Do not pour hot wax down your drain!

Once the entire piece of fabric is covered with colored wax, it is ready for the next step- adding dye. Take each piece of wax covered fabric and wad them up in a ball, creating many tiny cracks in the wax.

The instructions called for cold water dye with good reason. If you added this to hot water- all your wax would melt! Unfortunately, the only dye that I could find that did not call for hot water was spray dye that I found at my local craft store. No problem. I simply laid the pieces of fabric out on trash bags and then sprayed the crap out of them with the spray dye. I then patted them down with paper towels to get off the extra dye and let them dry overnight.

They looked terrible at this point and I was a bit worried. But I had faith.

Click here for the final steps!