BloPens Glitter Studio Review
Reviewed by Louise Totton
After a solid week or so of gorgeous weather, and a very promising start to the summer holidays, we are sat indoors today with the rain lashing against the windows and two very bored kids! I have decided that enough is enough, and unless they are using it for educational purposes, screen-time has been slashed to an hour a day. Which has left me kicking myself for being so strict, as I now need to entertain the little beasts!
Today’s pick out of the Summer Holiday box was the BloPens Glitter Studio by John Adams. We have had little BloPens sets before and the kids have really enjoyed them, but this was the first bigger set that they have owned. The premise of BloPens is really simple, but rather clever. They allow you to turn a standard felt-tip pen into a spray paint, using only your lungs to power them! We were sent the Glitter Studio Set, which meant that we got a cardboard art surface, 5 BloPens, a glue stick, 4 tubes of glitter and a selection of stencils and a couple of little projects.
First impressions were good, and the kids were super keen to get going on it! Just be careful when you open the box, because the box makes up the structure of the art surface, so if excited little hands get there first and tear the box open, you do lose that. After we opened the box, we were able to assemble the art surface. There is another bit of card inside the box that folds over and sits on top of the box. This then creates spaces to hold your pens and glitter, as well as a means to mount A4 paper and one of your stencils, so that they stay still when you’re using them.
After getting the BloPens ready to use (taking the lid off, flipping the pens from the storage position to the usage position and popping the lid back on we were ready to go. The girls each chose a stencil – my eldest went for an A5 fairy and castle and my youngest chose a larger A4 under the sea picture. The pens provided were blue, pink, purple, yellow and orange. I have to say, both kids were disappointed not to find a green, as both of their pictures had grass or plants on, but we decided that these were fantasy type images, so realistic colours didn’t really matter!
Using the BloPens is really, really easy. The kids found it quite simple to aim them, then with a little more practice, they were creating some quite lovely effects by mixing the colours. They don’t mix properly, as in blue + yellow doesn’t make green, but you can get some lovely speckled and mottled effects, and even some nice fading and transition effects once you get a bit more practiced.
The pictures looked fantastic when the kids had finished them, and they were both really proud of what they’d created. Once they had dried (it took less than 10 minutes), they got the glue stick out and got to work on embellishing their creations. The glue pen has a really narrow tip, so they were able to draw some intricate swirls as well as write their names with it, then it’s just a case of squeezing the little tubes of glitter to blow sparkles onto your picture.
We had a great afternoon with the BloPens, the kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves and it’s a pretty mess-free activity too. The set comes with plenty of stencils, and they can be reused as long as you remember to put the lids back on, you should be able to have lots of sessions of artistic fun! There are also a couple of little projects – a 3D hanging butterfly and a hanging flower decoration that they can’t wait to get their hands on.
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £22.99
For more information visit www.johnadams.co.uk. Available to buy from Amazon here.
