In our newest art for kids activity, we’ll be creating art using sandpaper as the canvas. You can even take the project a step further and use an iron to turn the finished crayon drawings on sandpaper into sun catchers!

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I’m so thrilled to be teaming up again with some super creative bloggers in the Easy Art Projects for Kids Series! Our last post in the series was Splatter Paint & Tape Resist Art! This week we’re focusing on crayon art. Be sure to check out all the fun crayon art projects for kids shared by the other participating blogs. I’ve included their links at the end of this post! (This post contains affiliate links.)

Art for Kids Using Crayons and Sandpaper

Drawing on Sandpaper

My kids probably use crayons almost everyday for drawing and coloring, whether it be on our easel or in their art journals. I thought it’d be fun to explore a new way to use crayons by drawing on sandpaper!

We bought sandpaper in a variety of grit sizes to use for our artwork. We were curious if the various textures would affect how our crayon drawings looked.

The kids and I sat down together at the kitchen table and began drawing on the sandpaper. Lucy noticed how the crayons felt funny as they ran across the sandpaper. She also pointed out that the drawings were a bit harder to see on the coarser sandpaper.

This was a wonderful sensory art project for Theo. After each mark he made on the sandpaper, he’d run his finger over it to see how it felt.

Melted Crayon Art- Sun Catchers

After making all our drawings, we couldn’t resist turing our finished artwork into melted crayon art! We were so excited to see what would happen to our pictures if we warmed them with an iron onto some paper.

I covered our surface with a towel, and then turned on our iron and set it to medium. I placed our crayon art face down onto some blank paper and ran the iron slowly over it for about 10-15 seconds. (You might want to protect your iron by placing another piece of paper between your sandpaper and iron.)

After warming the sandpaper we gently lifted it up to find out what happened. The crayon had melted onto the blank paper creating a duplicate of our original picture. So fun! And the melted crayon art had a unique look to it because of the texture of the sandpaper.

When we held up the melted crayon art, we noticed that the melted wax had made the paper more translucent. As we saw the sunlight go through the paper we just knew we had to make the melted crayon art into sun catchers for our window!