Children's Gift Ideas for the Holidays

We have a couple of birthdays coming up on the weekend and with Christmas around the corner its time to start thinking about gifts. I love to put together gift bags of my favorite art supplies, they're always a hit with the kids and their parents. For this weekends birthday parties I'm putting together painting supply gift bags.

Here are some ideas beyond crayons and markers:

Canvas Painting Kit:
A small stretched canvas, a few bottles of fun colored poster paints or tubes of acrylic paints. Keep the colors fun (pink, purple, orange, teal, bright green, orange or yellow) and a bottle/tube of black or white. A selection of brushes in different sizes.

Drawing Kit:
A sketch book of heavy weight paper, Caran d'Ache water soluble crayons, a couple of water soluble graphite pencils, and good quality drawing pencils. I like a selection of soft wood less pencils 2b, 4b and 8b, and of course, a good quality pencil sharpener. And finally, don't forget to include a set of chalk pastels and an eraser.

Collage Kit:
A sketch book with some nice heavy paper, glue stick, glitter glue, craft scissors that cut in a fancy patterns (zig zag, wavy, etc), a large ziploc bag full of random things to collage with(pieces of wrapping paper, bits of ribbon, fabric bits, feathers, popsicle sticks, toothpicks, you get the idea) and a couple of rolls of fun colored masking tape.

In Seattle, I love to stock up at The Artist and Craftsman, check out their web-site. They have absolutely everything and they always have a few sizes of stretched canvases for ridiculously cheap.