Prepping

1. Surface Preparation
If you are going to use masonite, it usually comes with a bit of a sheen. Make sure you sand it and rough it up pretty good, wipe off the dust with a damp cloth, and then put down a coat or two of primer. Whatever it is that you use as a surface should be primed. I have never used artist's gesso, I always just buy a quart of latex house primer (like Kilz Latex). Maybe I should use gesso, but the house primer is just so much cheaper. It's really up to you. I haven't had any problems with it yet - not that I'm aware of anyway.

2. Crayon Preparation
If you're at all like me and like to do monotonous, brainless, mind numbing tasks every once in a while, then you'll love getting the crayons ready! Now, for the reason I like the 24 ct. boxes... I buy the 24 ct. boxes by the case and there are 48 boxes in a case. That will give me 2 boxes full of each color crayon. So first you'll want to empty out the boxes and separate the crayons into piles of the same color. Then, using an X-acto knive, carefully make a slice down the paper of each crayon and remove the paper. This part takes FOREVER, so you might want to pop in a really long-running tv show on DVD or something.
Now, you can either put your crayons back in the boxes and label them so they stay clean and organized, or you can get these bins at the dollar store like I did where they will collect dust and cat hair, and the blues and purples will get mixed up. I just like that they're conveniently out in the open so I can grab bunches of them while I'm holding the hot heat gun and not looking. But that's just me. I do like to keep a full box of each color to take to Third Thursday or anywhere else I might be working outside the studio.