Since my daughter started primary school, she has come home and been wanting to ‘do something’ every day. I think the activities at school are so engaging, the TV is no longer an appealing option
Since my daughter started primary school, she has come home and been wanting to ‘do something’ every day. I think the activities at school are so engaging, the TV is no longer an appealing option and who am I to say otherwise, as I am sure she is getting far more from an activity. But where do you start on knowing what activities to do? Well John Adams have recently launched their Craft Club and sent us a few of their products to test out, and Emma has taken great delight in doing just that…
First up was eZee beads 3d mini scenes! Suitable from age 5+, and I worried that as Emma wouldn’t be able to do this independently, her fine motor skills need devloping a bit and her concentration is not the best, or so I thought…she took to eZee Beads like a duck to water, she started off following the patterns included but soon she was confident enough to create her own design!
You get 1200+ beads included in the set, in a variety of colours, you also get 4 designs cards, a plastic peg board to put your beads on, a bead tray to store your beads to keep the colours separate and a water sprayer to make your designs stick together and come to life.
So all you need to do is put a design card under the clear peg board and start putting your beads on. (Notice the rainbow complete design in the picture, Emma designed that herself!)
Once complete just simply spray your design with the water spritz, making sure it’s all covered. Then leave it to dry, the instructions say for 30 minutes, but I have found it’s best to leave it as long as possible for maximum dryness. The designs once dry are great! They keep their colour and we are yet to have a breakage, Emma has been using them to act out scenes in her games with her toys and they are still in one piece. Emma gives this a huge thumbs up, and can’t wait to get more beads and create more designs, this has really given her a thirst for more and more elaborate designs.
Next up was Blo Pens Glitter Studio! This is something we have never tried before, I have to be honest I was a little concerned that my children might suck accidentally and end up with a mouthful of ink, but I was pleased to get a closer look at the pens and realise that could never happen if they are used correctly. In this set you get 5 blo pens included, in pink, blue, purple, yellow and orange. You also get four tubes of glitter in silver, gold, pink and blue. The easel shown on the box is actually created by using the box, and adding the cardboard insert into it, this forms a lovely slanted position to do your designs, and it has holes for all your pens and glitter tubes too. It also has little slots which we have found brilliant for keeping the paper still, as well as the stencils while blowing too.
You get loads of stencils included in the kit, and you even get bits to create a butterfly mobile, even ribbon and glue is included. We found that popping out the butterflies to create our mobile, meant that the card surrounding it was a great stencil as was blowing our design over the butterfly left a lovely design on paper too. Emma loved having the glitter included in this set too, she took great delight in making her designs extra special with some special sparkles.
Everyone in the house has had a go with Blo Pens, and loved seeing the instant effects they create. My only advice would be to buy oodles of paper, Emma has been through more than 50 sheets in the past few days creating lovely designs.
Finally, the Pixelo Neon.
The idea behind this is pretty simple, it’s a special pen that dots a design wherever you want it. You get one pen included (this requires 1 x aaa battery), you also get 7 coloured pens which fit inside the Pixelo pen and you get 10 colouring sheets ready for you to get to work.
The Pixelo pen was really easy to use, just pop a pen in, and press the button on the front and it starts to move. Emma thought this was utterly hilarious and loved doing her design.
You can check out the John Adams Craft Club on Facebook here
The products featured were sent to us for the purpose of this review, all thoughts are my own. For more information please see my disclosure policy.
My fi year old daughter is the same, she had the ezee beads but they didn’t stick together properly, she wants the blo pens and pixelo, I had blo pens when I was a child and loved them too xXx