Doodle Crate Subscription Box Review & Coupon – Block-Printed Canvas Bin!

Of the several boxes within the KiwiCo family, Doodle Crate is the most likely to leave you with a keepable and displayable piece of art.  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 by teaching them basic and intermediate techniques of a new artistic medium each month.

Though geared toward kids, Doodle Crate is gender neutral and also excellent for anyone (even adults) wanting a craft subscription.  In our experience, this is the best “arts and crafts” box for older kids, tweens, teens, and adults.

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.  This month’s project is creating a custom-designed decorative and functional canvas bin!

The Crate includes all the supplies needed to create your own unique stamp and construct your bin.

It includes supports for the base and walls of the bin to make it sturdy and suitable for everyday use.  Because this could get messy, a large sheet of butcher paper was included to cover the work area.

Doodle Crate tends to focus on a single, often very involved craft and contains only what you’ll need for the project.  The primary material for the bin is a large sheet of pre-cut canvas.  Though Doodle Crate is often the most technically demanding box in the KiwiCo family, they made this project no more complex than was required.  The canvas was ready to use (no washing or pre-treating required), and it was cut to shape and even included holes for the fasteners.

A template sheet was was included for testing your stamp.  Though cutting and folding it is a bit more involved than simply testing your stamp on plain paper, it is very handy for seeing your design realized on a 3D object before committing to printing the canvas.  For someone planning a very complex design, or one that requires continuity around the basket and across seams, this is indispensable!

The booklet has excellent, textbook quality background on the subject matter of the project.  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 booklet walks through the project step-by-step in great detail.  Like many Doodle Crate projects, this one has some templates and project suggestions, but it also leaves room for a lot of creativity.

There are lots of pointers and helpful tips located throughout the booklet, and the designers are good at anticipating areas of potential confusion or difficulty, providing suggestions and work-arounds.  The booklet offered design suggestions and offered guidance on creating stamps, composing layouts, and orienting the print on the canvas.

One of the great things about this subscription is the adjustable difficulty.  You can almost always simplify or complicate the project to your liking by adjusting the intricacy of your artwork to suit your mood and ability.  Our seven year old is our primary Doodler in the household, and the artistic portion of the project automatically adjusts to her skill level, because she creates the artistic vision herself.

This project had a lot of hidden effort.  The printing itself was a fairly quick exercise, but a lot of time and planning could be put into designing the pattern, constructing a potentially very intricate printing block, imprinting and constructing the mock-up — and then finally working with the canvas itself to make the final product.

As always, the instructions were very clear and easy to follow.  I love the use of illustrations throughout — there are enough that it is easy to follow the progression of the project by pictures alone.  This stage of the project had more illustrations than steps!

The Crate included a nice pile of geometric shapes to work with.  Each was self-adhesive, making stamp creation a breeze.  The provision of the foam pieces made success much more likely, promoting uniformity of height across the pattern.

Our printed and assembled bag, prior to inserting the rigid walls.
The wall and floor support are tucked under the canvas and glued into place.
Here, we see clips holding the canvas against the wall inserts while the glue dries.

This was another fun Doodle Crate project.  We kept our design fairly simple, and we didn’t encounter any issues.  The mock-up was a very useful visualization tool.  The toughest part of the project was mastering the even application of paint onto the stamp to create uniform opacity on the canvas.  I would have loved having an extra length of canvas to practice on, as the texture and resulting image aren’t identical to that rendered on paper.  The construction was very easy, but the bin is surprisingly sturdy — we are using it to hold books and journals.

Visit Doodle Crate to subscribe or find out more!  Use this link to save 30% on your first month of Doodle Crate!  (or Kiwi Crate and the KiwiCo family subscriptions Tinker Crate and Koala Crate).