Little Homeschool Blessings: Our Experience and Review of Doodle Crate: Sumi-E

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Our Experience and Review of Doodle Crate: Sumi-E

As a gift, our girls received a Sumi-E Doodle crate from one of their aunts. She ordered it from the Kiwi Crate shop. Whenever you purchase one, they get stored in your account, so that you are never sent a duplicate one in your subscription. If you have been gifted one, you simply let them know and they put it in your account history. (We have a special referral link to Kiwi Crate, by clicking any of the Kiwi Crate company links below, you will be clicking that link. And right now, you'll received a $10 off bonus by using our link!!). Kiwi Crate offers 4 types of crates: Tinker Crates, Doodle Crates, Kiwi Crates, and Koala Crates. The kits are available as a monthly subscription with options for purchasing one box at a time, 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months.

Doodle Crates are art/craft kits that are designed for ages 9-14+. The kit contains the materials to create the project and a booklet with information and history about the technique, materials included in the kit, additional materials needed, how to do the technique with step by step directions.

There is generally one large project and several practice materials to try the art/craft out before working on the larger project.

The kits are available as a monthly subscription with options for purchasing one box at a time, 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months. They even have a shop where you can purchase boxes without a subscription.

The Sumi-E kit comes with:

two bamboo dowels
an ink well
a wooden block
ink
red stamp pad
glue dots
sponge
string
foam squares
practice papers
red mounting paper
magic paper
rice paper
mailing tube
bamboo brush
Sumi-E Ink Wash Painting information and direction booklet

To complete the project, you will need water and something to cover any surfaces that your child will be painting on.

We started by watching the instructional video.

You can see it here:

The girls began experimenting with their magic paper. You only add water to create images that completely disappear when dry.

From there, they created their stamps.

There were enough foam squares that the girls tried out several different stamps.

The squares are attached to the block with glue dots.

Then on to the practice pages. There were some samples that they tried out in the booklet, but Jo-Jo also made some that were specific to the interests of people in our house.

When they started with the ink, we gave them gloves and a box as a mat to prevent staining. They also tried to wear dark clothing so that the ink didn't splash on their clothing.