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. The sky is the limit, and crafts made from the same kit can be kept simple, or they can be made as intricate as the artist desires.
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 – the end result is nearly always something you will want to save!
This month’s project: Textured Clay Luminaries!
DEAL: 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).
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. Doodle Crate tends to focus on a single craft and contains only what you’ll need for the project.
The booklet has excellent, textbook quality background on the subject matter of the project.
It’s loaded with high-quality pictures and illustrations to both give you ideas and help you along, and they produce a video tutorial for each project, too. Doodle Crate is great at providing perspective and inspiration for their projects, showing examples of the medium in real life settings.
The booklet proceeds step-by-step, from start to finish, with detailed guidance the whole way. The numerous diagrams explain every step clearly and make it practically impossible to go off track. At every phase of the project, Doodle Crate presents several options to bring added personality to your work – and you are always free to do something completely original. After all, it is YOUR creation.
The guidance is always thorough enough to allow you to create a polished looking piece. This Crate is suitable for a wide range of ages, and older kids and adults can bring as much complexity to their projects as they want.
Our eight year old was so excited about this project that she did the entire thing, start to finish, with no assistance. She began by cutting her clay on the template.
The provided rolling pin had spacers to give the clay a uniform thickness. The Crate included several stencils to texture the exterior of the luminary.
There was also a set of different sized tubes for cutting holes in it. I was impressed at how fancy my daughter made her luminary. It’s really cool!
After rolling into a tube and drying overnight, she used the provided paints and spouncer to add some color to the project. The paint is translucent, and the tiny holes she made with a toothpick turned into little stained glass panels when painted over.
The clay remains slightly flexible for several days, allowing the final project to be bent into tube without any break in the wall.
I love the liveliness of her design, with its intentionally non-symmetrical rim.
She chose to keep the interior white (though it could be painted), so the light emitted would be as clear as possible. The finished project, with the included LED tea light, cast a gentle light that is perfect as a night light or accent piece.
Our daughter had a great time with this project, and we are truly impressed with the intricacy of her chosen design. Doodle Crate is a really great project subscription for tweens, teens, and even adults. Some projects can get fairly complex, but the thorough instructions and guidance never leave us confused, and most projects can be done by pre-teens without adult assistance. This project stretched out over a few days because of the interstitial drying time. Only half of the provided clay was needed for the luminary, and we have enought supplies to make an entire additional luminary, sans tea light.
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