3D Fabric Paints from Dylon

When Claire from Bottle PR asked for people to do some arty Xmas stuff on fabric I thought “why not?”. I like messy arty stuff, Kieran adores it. A few days later these 3D fabric paints arrived in the post:

HUGE panic, I don’t have an iron, I’ll mess it up, I can’t cope well with anything that contains glitter! After Claire talked me down and reassured me that they didn’t need ironing and would just set in about 4hrs, we got to work.

[slideshow id=11] When I say “we”, I mean Kieran, aka Mr Independent. At 5yrs he was more than capable of designing his own Xmas tshirt and had a fantastic time doing it.

The end result….

Click to enlarge

It has indeed set overnight and has been great fun. I would say though that avoiding huge blobs is the better idea as otherwise it takes much longer to “set”.

There is plenty left over and we are going to hunt out some more from this range, which is available at John Lewis and Hobbycraft, because there is no end to the projects we can do, festive and otherwise. Kieran wants to get some plain fabric bags to decorate and put some home-made biscuits in for his Aunt’s, another lovely Christmas idea.

Great fun and a new way for Kieran to create, I can see us doing many more projects involving Dylon in the future and look forward to playing with the other items in their art & craft range.

PlayMais – Fantastic, Affordable, Fun! #PhotoReview

We were sent a PlayMais World -Sea set to review just before the half term (great timing!). Playmais is 100% natural, eco-friendly and made from sweetcorn and food dyes and is a fantastic alternative playdough and other modelling materials. The packs vary in size, starting at just £2.99. The Sea World set we are reviewing retails at £16.99, and you get 1000 pieces, scenery, a child-friendly knife, instructions and more.

We are big fans of PlayMais and here is why:

The box is crammed full with over 1000 pieces but really caught my eye was the lack of packaging. This is a good thing... I hate wasteful packaging!
The box comes with scenery boards which can be built up for your child to display their models on. The scenery comes with instructions but it was just too much for me & Daddy had to take over. We struggled with the scenery but it's worth noting that Kieran opened the box the second time and just slotted it together. Humph. Perhaps it's not that complicated then?
Kieran loved using this safe (also eco-friendly) cornstarch knife to "cut" the blocks into different shapes. No glue in needed to put the shapes together, as the set comes with a little cloth you rinse and wring out. Rubbing the sides/end of a block on the water cloth is enough to make it sticky enough to bond with another piece.
The box states this set is for age 5+. Kieran is 5yrs in 3wks and could use it fine but found the instructions challenging. Instead, he used his imagination - this is Cyril the Sea Snake, as modelled by Kieran. This set really is suitable for a variety of ages from 4/5yrs up.
Yes, it's suitable for kids of all ages.....!
Just an illustration to show you just how much you do get in the box! The blocks aren't sticky so won't mix, dry out and get messy like dough or modelling clay so everything can literally get thrown back in the box for easy tidy-ups.
HOURS! Kieran & Daddy played for hours, Kieran and his friends have played for hours, me and Kieran have played for hours, Kieran has played on his own with these for hours.... I love PlayMais!
As you don't use glue you can stick the blocks to anything, the scenery, pot plants, photo frames... great for taking the kid's creations to a new level. Once dried up I have been able to easily remove blocks from each other for reuse
I have to include this or Daddy will be upset. Daddy created Terrance the Turtle using the step by step instructions. Didn't he do well!?

So how did the PlayMais get rated by our star judge?

A big thumbs up for PlayMais!

A great new craft experience for us and a wonderful gift idea!

You can see more about PlayMais on their website and don’t forget to visit them on Facebook!

*We were sent a Playmais set to test and review. Our findings are our own and are not influenced by PlayMais at all. PlayMais also holds no liability for the quality of my photography (!) and cannot be blamed for my inability to read scenery instructions.