Holly loves to paint! At school (usually without an apron). At home with our childminder after school. In the garden. At the table. She loves it! The trouble is that I really don't trust Holly with paint. Holly is wild and enthusiastic but her clothes always get covered and so does our laminate flooring and the walls... oh my, the walls. I may have found a solution to the messy chaos though - Paint Sticks.
Paint Sticks are wind up sticks of paint, a little like glue sticks that I'm sure your little people are used to using. The sticks are made from semi-solid paint which means there is more or less no mess and definitely no need for paintbrushes which is great news to me as Holly usually ends up utilising about 100 different brushes and then leaves them for me to clean up afterwards!
Holly and Lara were sent a pack of classic Paint Sticks from Little Brian - the pack contains 12 different paint sticks in bright bold colours. The girls very quickly set to work making their own master pieces. Using the paint sticks is a little like using a thick crayon... the paint goes on nice and thick and dries quickly.
Holly painted me a brightly coloured rainbow using almost every colour of Paint Stick available! Lara experimented with colour blending. The thing I think they most enjoyed was using the paints to coat rubber stamps; I thought this was a really creative idea from Lara because stamping ink is a nightmare with children (gets everywhere, stains everything) and in fact Lara has a greater level of control over colours when using the Paint Sticks with rubber stamps than she would do with any other medium. At the end of our first Paint Stick experiment, neither girl had paint on their hands, arms or clothes... RESULT!
I haven't told the girls yet but Paint Sticks have a little secret... you can use them on windows and glass too. The paint glides onto glass easily and you can rub it off easily with a cloth. This makes them perfect for decorating windows, perhaps for a party or big event such as Halloween or Christmas.
I've now packed up our Paint Sticks as I'm planning on taking them with us on holiday. They're so compact and mess-free that I thought they might make good entertainment for us when we're away so that the girls can continue being creative even when we aren't at home.
A pack of 12 Little Brian classic Paint Sticks costs around £5-6 which is more affordable than buying 12 large bottles of different coloured poster paints and definitely less messy.
