Master Kitz by Kidzaw.com - A New TOS Review!!!

Over the years I have tried to stretch myself so that I could make sure that art was a part of our homeschool life, especially for my artist loving daughter. So when I had the opportunity to review a new homeschool art product I jumped at the chance. Master Kitz The Starry Night is one of many choices offered by Kidzaw.com and it happens to be one of my favorite van Gogh paintings. I knew that even if none of my kids wanted to try out the kit that I would love too ... then I'd have my own van Gogh!

I had never heard of Master Kitz or Kidzaw.com, but I am not going to forget them.  Each kit comes in a sturdy artist's tool kit packed with everything you need to create a masterpiece. Each project helps you or your student learn, create and then share their individualized masterpiece recreation.

The one we received was Master Kitz The Starry Night we opened the tool box (which had a magnetic closure to help keep the items safely inside) to reveal all that it came with:
A 12-step detailed instruction sheet which also includes a mini van Gogh unit study, star mask stickers, 3 acrylic paint colors, 5 oil pastels, a sponge roller, and a custom van Gogh roller. It also came with 2 large sheets (16" x 20") thick art paper and a specific composition stencil to help create the 'drawing' part of Vincent van Gogh's painting.

Since we have been in a temporary place it was a little difficult to find a good location to do the painting, but we found our washable tablecloth and decided to use the front porch table area to use as our art space. Also I needed to find a flat surface where we could roll out the paper and stencil, roll it the other way and then put something hard on it to rest flat and the table on the porch was our only choice for that.  We also didn't have all of our regular supplies (like masking/painter's tape to hold down the paper) so we improvised a little. Since Audrie was going to do the majority of the painting, I told her I'd help to hold the paper so it wouldn't shift while she was rolling.  The entire 12-step process was very easy for her to read and complete the steps on her own, but I stayed with her and helped a little.

Before we got started we read the van Gogh info sheet. It had lots of information about his family, childhood, and his life before painting. He was even a missionary before he started painting! And he was encouraged by his brother Theo to pursue his art passion. After learning solely about Vincent and you open the pamphlet up to a two-page spread all about his different style of painting and how it came about. Little blurbs, cute drawings, and small actuall replicas of famous paintings fill these pages giving your student/artist great information and a little bit of art history along with the mechanics of creating art.

Next we opened up the pamphlet to reveal the instructions (or inspirations as they call them.)  There are 12 simple steps along with a bigger picture of The Starry Night so that your artist has something to go by if they want to make it more similar to the original.

First we laid out all of the supplies and realized we didn't have tape. So I would hold the paper down when needed.

Next you put your paint on the plate and roll with the special van Gogh roller. It was so cool! It created the swirly bits which instantly people recognize as the quintescential marker of a van Gogh.

After the first color, she then went back to add on the white on top.

Then we had to let the paint dry. Since it was cold in the porch it took a little longer to dry. And since we are in temporary housing we couldn't seem to find the hair dryer to help the drying process go quicker.

Once it was dry we could put on the stencil. If we hadn't waited until it dried the stencil could have smeared the paint and made it more muffled and not speckled. I was able to find a little bit of gift wrap tape so we taped in small areas around the stencil so it wouldn't move while she was painting over it again - this time with the black paint. It was very dramatic!

And this time we used the sponge roller and not the special roller. This filled in the 'composition' of the painting (the stuff that van Gogh drew.) We had a discussion about this that he did it all by hand while adding pieces and parts buillding his composition with layers, but for a kit created for kids and adults that it was easier to use a stencil.

Once she was done painting the stencil we carefully took it off and revealed a beautiful masterpiece. BUT it wasn't done yet! While we waited for this step of paint to dry we went in to clean up a little bit.

I don't think I read the directions correctly about what type of material the stencil was made from (Cypress). It felt like vinyl, so I went to wash off the acrylic paint so that we could use the stencil again for another painting (my son was eager to make his masterpiece as well). However, after running it under water, I noticed that the paper was getting wet and you could tell. Whoops! See this shouldn't happen if it was vinyl.

Whoops! My bad!

Apparantly it just had a plastic like coating and paper in the middle. The bottom right of the instructions tell you to wash off the rollers with soap and water and to let the stencil dry flat. My bad! But it has seemed to recover enough to be used again. I think it would be better if the stencil was made from a more resuable material like vinyl or thin plastic.

The next step was to pull off the star masks. These are also meant to be reusable and I didn't wash these, but they did stick a little too well to the paper, even though they were low tack. You can see that when we were taking them off the paper got stuck to the sticker part, which might also make it challenging for us to make a second masterpiece. They also took my daughter a really long time to peel off and she opted to let me help so that there would be less ripping. It might have been the temperature of the porch or she might have pushed on them too hard and they adhered more then they should have, but we were able to get them off and I think we will be able to use them at least one more time.

Once the painting was completely dry, my daughter was then able to individualize the painting. She got out the 5 oil pastels (2 yellows, and 1 of orange, blue, and white) and started 'creating' the stars and adding details to the composition. She even asked me to help her, which I gladly did!

Once she was happy with the results we stopped. I think it is beautiful, don't you? I had so much fun watching her create the painting and spending time with her talking about the process and about what we had read.

I will definitely be doing a 2nd one with my son as soon as we move into our new rental house (a BIG answer to prayer!) where we will have way more space and all of our supplies (like tape). There are certainly plenty of leftover of all the supplies and even when the paint runs out the stencil and rollers can be used again and again (if you do NOT WASH the stencil).

After we were done we went to the kidzaw.com site and checked out all the other Master Kitz available - there are about 10 others and we want them all!! I think I've even added Water Lillies and Sunflowers to my list and huuby says one of his favorites is The Great Wave. Since I have my favorite, The Starry Night, his will probably the next one we get!  There are also mini demonstration videos you can watch. These kits are great ways to add art to our homeschool and all have fun.

I encourage you to check out all the rest of the Crew reviews by clicking the link below. I know I will be since they will all have different end results of their OWN masterpiece! You can also find Kidzaw.com on Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube.