Crafts in our house make up a good portion of the kid’s spare time, they just love to draw, paint and create, especially the eight-year-old. Crafting activities are more than just drawing a picture, they help make vital connections between different parts of a child’s brain. They are also great for developing a child’s mental wellbeing with being able to express themselves, enabling brain development, building confidence, helps develop dexterity and teaches them above different colours, shapes, materials and textures. We encourage all sorts of crafting activities in our house, not just as a time filler or boredom buster but as a way to learn as well. With Christmas fast approaching we are always looking for new craft ideas to pop under the tree.
When we received the Pixelo Metallic set from John Adams the girls very interested and excited, especially the more creative eight-year-old.
Pixelo Metallic are pre-drawn and coloured pages that you can customise with metallic dots to give it your shimmery look.
In the box, there is:
- 1x Electronic Pixelo Pen (1x AAA battery required, not supplied)
- 6x Coloured Markers
- 8x Designs Sheets to Colour
- Instructions
The box contains different design sheets to colour and dot, featuring mermaids, dolphins, unicorns, seahorse, fairy, castle, llama and lizards. They are already brightly coloured so there is no actual colouring in to do but you can customise the images, you use the Pixelo electronic pen to add detail in. By using the pen as you would a standard colouring pen, or switch it on and then it moves up and down very fast creating dotty dabs on the picture. With the pen you can draw, doodle and dot.
As this is the metallic version of the Pixelo range anything drawn or dotted on the picture is nice, bright and shimmery gives the images a sparkly finish.
Using the set is simple. You have six different coloured metallic effect marker pens, and you place the colour you want to use into the electronic Pixelo pen. You can then draw as you normally would, or you can switch on the pen and will start to dab dots quite fast on the paper. Switch off the pen when you want to change colour and pop in a new pen.
Overall, the kids have really enjoyed using this set. The pen is easy to hold and use, even when switched and creating rapid movement. The supplied images are excellent, and they have loved customising them, making the metallic effects really stand out creating a very striking image. We also had some plain black paper in the cupboard which they have loved using to create their own images from scratch.
The supplied images do not take up much time in themselves to complete as they are already pre-drawn and coloured and you are just adding accent colours and dots, although the kids loved doing them and were extremely happy with the results. We would recommend buying some extra black or coloured paper so that they can continue to draw and create their own designs. If you visit the John Adams website you might be able to download some more designs to print and work on.
Pixelo Metallic is a fun and entertaining craft set that certainly keeps boredom at bay for a good few hours and produces stunning effects on the pictures. We found that the eight-year-old enjoyed it more than her eleven-year-old older sister, but they both did enjoy creating their pictures.
Rating: 4/5
RRP: £19.99 (suitable for 6 years +)
For more information, visit www.johnadams.co.uk. Available to buy from Amazon here.
