geekosystem

American artist Christian Faur makes portraits with crayons, but he doesn't draw with them. Instead, he arranges the crayons upright, giving his portraits a pixel-like effect that is strangely nostalgic, like looking at a really old television. This is the least childish crayon art I've ever seen, and preschoolers must never be allowed near them.

If you have a secret love of crayons and coloring books that aren't so secret since you wrote about them on the Internet like I just did, grabbing some of these pixelated crayons might just be how to make yourself feel better that you just divulged a deep, dark secret. The fact that a box of six will only set you back fifteen bucks might also help lighten the mood.

In the American southwest, wildfire is a very real problem and an existential threat for many people in the region. To educate people about the dangers of wildfires, artist Herb Williams created a series of brightly colored tongues of flame, reaching out of the ground like alien tentacles. If any of those eye-popping colors look familiar, it's because each of Williams' flames are made from Crayola crayons.

Crayons rock. Way more than colored pencils. But eventually, they're all worn down, and sometimes you sharpen them and they're just never the same, and you end up with all these crayon nubs that you've rendered impossible to hold. Until now, because now there's a thing that lets you melt them and create new crayons. It's supposed to be for kids to teach them recycling, but feel free to go ahead and borrow it.

According to science, the smell of Crayola crayons is the 18th most recognizable smell to adults, more familiar than cheese and bleach. Help us answer the most vital crayon question after the jump.

Rocketry enthusiast John Coker had a vision: to refashion I-ROC rockets as a giant box of Crayola crayons, and blast them off straight from the box. And it worked -- a rocket simulation program predicted that the one pound, thoroughly boosted rockets would reach 2,928 feet. Spoiler alert: blue, red, black, and purple achieve liftoff: orange, yellow, green, and brown are stuck in the box. A few more pics after the jump: