Doodle Crate Review – January 2016

As a working mom, I find it challenging to find time in the week to spend time with each of my kids separately. Tonight, my daughter and I had an at home “date”, with hot cocoa (it’s cold here in Michigan!) and her very first Doodle Crate!

Doodle Crate sends you materials to help your child develop their inner artist for $20/month. This is such a great crate for Sage because she does have some artistic talent, and I’d love for her to develop it some more. Doodle Crate is meant for kids ages 9+, but it was perfect for Sage to review who is 8 years old.

Here is the box. It’s pretty much the same size as a Kiwi Crate box, but it’s blue!

Here’s a quick peek at what we got in the box. This month’s Doodle Crate theme is “Make Your Own Watercolor Calendar”.

The crate included 18 sheets of high-quality watercolor paper (12 sheets for each calendar month and 6 blank sheets for practice or other painting), a watercolor paint set with paint cakes, a nice paintbrush, a wooden stand and dowel, a high quality ink pen, and a straw.

We got a booklet that explains 7 different watercolor techniques, including a flat wash, wet wash, gradient wash, sgraffito (which uses a push pin to scratch paper), salt wash, pen drawing, and straw painting (spreading watercolor by blowing through a straw. There were other ideas like using a white crayon and then laying your watercolor on top, to get a “resist” effect.

The booklet tells you to first create a puddle of water by dipping your paint brush into a cup of water and then placing the water on the cover of the paint set.

Then you dip your paintbrush into a paint cake and then add the color to the water. Sage chose green here.

She started experimenting with the different shades of green by painting the stem of a flower.

She moved on to other colors and was able to get some cool watercolor effects by varying the amount of water she was using.

She used the pen to add numbers to her first calendar sheet. The pen is something I would use to write a nice card or letter. I may have to borrow it from her!

This was Sage’s finished calendar page for January in the wooden stand. While we don’t have any flowers blooming here in January in Michigan, it sure will brighten my day when I look at it in the morning!

I loved that this Doodle Crate made it super easy for my daughter to create a masterpiece that she can actually use! It will provide her hours of creative time for the month to come and had really nice, high-quality art supplies. She really loved this January Doodle Crate, and so did I!

You can get Doodle Crate for 40% off your first month by using coupon code SNOWDAY.

What do you think of Doodle Crate? I think it would make a great gift for age 7 and up!