This post contains items that have been sent for review.

When I was pregnant, I had all these visions of being a really crafty, always-baking, house proud mother. I’d spend our Sunday mornings whipping up a batch of brownies with Pickle, skipping out to feed the ducks, and then coming home to the smell of roast beef before bath, book and bed. The truth is… I do sometimes do these things, but it takes me about a fortnight to properly clean up the aftermath. Fun things with toddlers are MESSY- because for it to be fun, you’ve got to let go a little bit… you need to embrace the mess and let it happen. But I’ve learned this week, that there are ways to do memorable, fun crafts without destroying the house. Interested? Read on.

Super excited for get painting!

This week we were sent some Little Brian Paint Sticks products to try out. They work just like gluesticks – all the fun of painting but without the water, without the brushes and without the agonising drying time. The Paint Sticks are water soluble, and can be used on paper, card, wood, canvas and even windows! For us, we decided to embrace the Easter season, and do a bit of Egg Painting.

Hard boiled eggs ready for painting

Jim and I debated whether it would be best to hard boil the eggs or pin prick one end and empty them. Something about a hollow egg shell still felt very delicate to me, so my opinion won and I started our activity by hard boiling half a dozen eggs .

Pickle very excited to get stuck in decorating his Easter eggs

I popped the eggs into a silicone egg mould (which I used last year to make Easter Egg chocolates for Pickle’s friends). It was perfect to hold still six eggs, allowing for easy painting without them sliding around or having to coordinate holding in one hand.

Painting with Little Brain Paint Sticks

The Little Brian Paint Sticks we used were brilliant. I thought the Mini Sticks were the best to use for the eggs – a great size for painting smaller surfaces, and for smaller hands to hold, but Little Brian also make full sized sticks, and chalk sticks too.

Holding a selection of paint sticks in hand showing the colours

The Mini Set we had contained 12 classic colours, 6 day glow colours and 6 metallic colours. There was a really lovely range of colours to choose from, and I had high hopes for a gorgeous multicolour array of eggs to use as decor for a while… but of course, Pickle mainly just wanted to use one colour. Purple was his favourite, and so we ended up with six mainly purple eggs!

Getting crafty for some Easter Fun with paint sticks

The paint sticks were really intuitive for Pickle to use: he didn’t need much help, and once I’d taken the lid off for him, he happily got cracking. At first, he just kind of block scribbled over the eggs, but as he got a bit more confident, he drew some little smiley faces – the cutest thing ever!

Pickle using his paint sticks to decorate hard boiled eggs

We’ve tried a few non-messy painting alternatives now, and I have to say, these paint sticks are the easiest I’ve used to date! There’s no brushes needed, no water, no mixing and no washing up to do afterwards. It’s just lid off, roll up and you’re good to go. Once finished? Just pop the lid back on. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. I’ll be keeping them somewhere close to hand as I have a feeling we’ll be using them lots.

Pink and purple painted Easter Egg with Paint Sticks

Even with Pickle’s scribbling, the results look amazing and speak for themselves! I love the egg above – he painted it with metallic silver first, with orange and purple over the top (it’s very easy to layer the paint because it dries so quickly), and this shimmery mottled effect egg was the result. I think it looks really cool!

Easter Egg painted with Little Brain paint sticks in an egg cup with flowers

I didn’t get much of a look in with the Paint Sticks myself as Pickle was too keen to do it all himself, but I did try my hand at a few zig-zags just to test out how easy it would be to do more intricate patterns. It wasn’t as easy as using a pen, but it’s definitely do-able.

The Important Details

If you’d like to get your hands on some of these fab Little Brian Paint Sticks, they’re fairly widely available on the UK high street as well as online. The Mini Sticks 24 Pack we used for this activity is currently selling on Amazon for under £10 (correct as at 15th April 2019).

Painting with metallic paint stick

High Street Retailers

  • Smyths
  • Tesco
  • Debenhams
  • Ryman’s
  • Toymaster

Online Retailers

  • Amazon
  • Very
  • Wicked Uncle
  • Baker Ross
Close up of the paint sticks surrounded by flowers

Disclaimer: we were sent a variety of Little Brian Paint Sticks in order for us to carry out this craft activity and write a review. All content, opinions and views remain my own.