Sgraffito

You will need: paper, wax crayons (we have used Stockmar Crayons) and a scraper - included with all Stockmar Crayons but you can also use any scraping tool, for example, a coin or butter knife.

This first project was inspired by one of the creative projects on the Stockmar website. They have lots of useful creative ideas to try out with your children.

Draw a house, large tree and moon using geometric shapes. Colour in all your shapes. Use white for the front of your house.

Colour the background of the house green and the sky blue. Once this is done, colour the whole picture with a rich dark blue, red and violet.

Once your you have finished colouring the whole picture with violet, you can start to scrape out the house, moon and tree. Use a giant brush to brush away the wax bits. Use your scraper to create interesting patterns in the sky and around your house.

Encaustic

You will need: paper, wax crayons, scalpel, an iron.

Place several sheets of scrap paper underneath your drawing paper. Using your scalpel or pocket knife, scrape some wax on to a sheet of paper. Use lots of colours and scrape as much as you like.

Place lots of old scrap paper on top of your wax scrapings. This is to prevent any wax melting on to your iron. Iron over your layers. Make sure that younger children are supervised or do this for them.

Our finished result. We decided to paint over the melted wax to finish off our experiment. 

Wax Resist

You will need: watercolour paper, watercolours, paint brush, wax crayons.

Using wax crayons, draw a fish and some underwater plants and coral. Colour your drawing with bright colours.

Get your water colours ready. Start to paint over your whole drawing. Using dark watercolour paints will make your drawing stand out.

My son's fish, which I think is pretty brilliant.