Doodle Crate Subscription Box Review & Coupon – Pencil Holders

Our latest Doodle Crate made a great piece of art that was both practical and decorative!  Doodle Crate is a member of the KiwiCo family geared toward kids 9+.  It inspires young makers to learn new skills and gain creative confidence through craft and art projects, but it is also excellent for anyone (even adults) wanting a craft subscription. It’s not just another craft project every month – it’s a primer teaching the basic and intermediate techniques of a new artistic medium each month. In my experience, this is the best “arts and crafts” box for older kids, tweens, teens, and adults.  It’s also not just for girls – it’s gender neutral, and boys love it too.

Every crate comes with everything you need to complete the project, except for a few basic items from your home, as well as a booklet — they recently updated the format from a fold-out pamphlet to a true, staple-bound booklet.

All the supplies for the project.

The booklet has excellent, textbook quality background on the subject matter of the project — this crate included some interesting factoids on pencils and their origin.  The booklet is loaded with high-quality pictures and illustrations to both give you ideas and help you along.  Doodle Crate is great at giving some perspective and inspiration for their projects.

The instructions are clear and easy to follow and broken down step by step, and my daughter reads every step before we begin.  There are lots of pointers and helpful tips located throughout.

Some crates have lots and lots in the way of background — this project opted for providing full instructions for multiple project ideas.
Sometimes extension ideas are included in the booklet.  In this case, different animal suggestions!

Our younger child needs a bit more help with some of the detail work, but he can manage much on his own.  Our daughter is a little younger than the target age of the box, but she is able to do most projects without substantial assistance.

We made a blowfish, for which full instructions were provided, and a peacock, which was a suggested idea.

After drying overnight, we painted our creatures with the provided paint.

The secondary project for this crate was creating a set of homemade pencils for our pencil holders.  We started by painting the blank side of the colorful paper with glue.

We then rolled up the colorful graphite rods in the paper, sealing with glue as we went.

Our completed pencil holders — painted, lacquered, and stuck with our homemade pencils!

Our fabulous peacock!  The self-drying clay was easy to work with — it stuck together well and allowed us to create very thin appendages without it drying out.

Our beautiful blowfish.  The kids love having objet d’art that they created themselves, and the pencils are completely functional, too!

Doodle Crate is lots of fun — the projects are open-ended, so the difficulty is scalable to age — you can get as complex in your design as you wish, or you can keep it simple.  In either case, we think that the resulting projects are keepable, giftable, and high-quality, and that the techniques are appropriate and well-suited for the 9-16+ target age range.

Visit Doodle Crate to subscribe or find out more!  Save 30% on your first month with coupon code MS30  (or Kiwi Crate and the KiwiCo family subscriptions Tinker Crate and Koala Crate).