I’ll be the first to admit that I tend to find craft time a tad stressful, I’m really not one of those Mum’s who embraces mess. I try to not hyper ventilate when my son suggests getting paints out, but I’m never going to be one of those parents who can happily just let go and let mayhem happen. So whenever I find products that let my son have lots of fun but without there being any mess for me to worry about, then I am all over it. We were having a home day last week and enjoyed some mess free creativity with Mix-Up Clay from Alphabet Pie.
Too good to be true? Would mess free creativity with Mix-Up Clay really be absolutely mess free. Well we were to discover that this set really is just that, no mess at all. My kind of heaven and my son’s idea of great fun.
The set comes with 60g of air-dry clay and 4 pots of colour tints in black, red, yellow and blue, all of which is packaged in a resealable bag.
There are tips and instructions on the back of the pack of Mix-Up Clay and it’s really easy to get started. The most important thing to remember is to keep the unused clay sealed in the bag, or an air tight container, otherwise it will dry out and you won’t be able to make anything with it.
The tints look like paint but when you actually touch them, the mixture is stretchy and can be rolled off your fingers without leaving any residue.
Add a little bit of tint to some plain Mix-Up Clay and then squidge, stretch and play with the clay and watch it change colour. You really don’t need much of the tint to create your coloured clay, the more you add the darker the colour. You can also mix tint to create different colours, which was a great reminder for my son, who wanted to make orange, green and purple.
Once you’ve got your colours it’s a case of letting your imagination run free. My son decided he wanted to make a Mallard steam train – you might need to use your imagination to see his vision but he was well away, creating a blue train and tender and using black for the wheels and smoke.
Next up he wanted a mini Biff, his ever-present Worry Eater. So he mixed a bit of the yellow and red tints to make his orange clay and away he went. He’d already made some black clay to make the wheels for his train so he used some of the leftovers to finish mini Biff. He used a blunt knife to make marks in the clay.
We’d been having a look at the solar system earlier in the day and my son decided he’d make a sun and he told me that his sun would look like the real sun, it’s not just yellow you know Mummy!
I’m not often allowed to ‘help’ these days with craft activities. But I was allowed to make my son a flower and make some green clay for him.
Whilst I was making a flower, my son set to work making a snail.
When you’ve completed your mess free creativity with Mix-Up Clay you just put your creations to one side for approximately six hours to let them fully dry.
We had some coloured clay left after our craft session so I just wrapped them up individually in cling film and placed them back with the remaining unused Mix-Up Clay in the resealable bag, along with the colour tint pots. We’ve still got loads of clay and colour tint left for more craft sessions in the months ahead.
For £5.95 I think the Mix-Up Clay sets are great value for money and they really are mess free. They offer a chance for kids to really get creative and have the educational aspect of creating different colours too. We’ve been really impressed and I’ve added my Amazon Affiliate link below for your reference.
disclosure: we were sent the items mentioned in exchange for an honest review