Review: Fimo Soft Craft Kits
My niece loves art and crafts, she wants to be a fashion designer when she grows up, and she is always on the look out for new crafts to explore so, when I brought round two Fimo kits for her to have a look at she we was really excited. Both of us have heard of Fimo before, and seen creations made by friends using this modelling clay but neither of us have had the chance to use it before.I was sent two kits to review by Merry over at Patch of Puddles. The first kit was an introductory pack - the Fimo Soft Basic Starter Kit (£13:95)
This pack includes 9 half blocks of Fimo Soft in a range of bright colours, a bottle of varnish, a Fimo tool and a mat. It also includes very basic instructions.
The second kit we were sent was the Fimo Soft Create Your Own Pets Cats and Dogs Set (£4:75)
This kit includes 4 blocks of Fimo soft and basic instructions to create your own cats and dogs.
Fimo is recommended for children aged 8 and over. My niece and nephew are 10 and 8 so I thought that this would be right up their street. My nephew is only recently starting to take an interest in crafts so I was surprised that he was really keen to get involved too.
The first thing we did was to open both packs up and have a look at all the colours contained. The Starter Kit was great and, we thought, contained all the colours we would need, whereas the Pets kit has orange, red, black and white and we agreed that these were great shades to create cats and dogs from. We were all expecting some instructions with the kits to help us decide what to create and were a bit surprised to see no ideas for models in the starter kit, and only really basic ideas for the cats and dogs in the Pets kit. I was expecting my niece and nephew to be a bit taken aback by this but they straight away decided what they wanted to make and started to model their ideas. Bud is a massive duck fan. As far as he is concerned anything with wings is a duck and says 'quack, quack', his cousins are well aware of this so both of them decided to make ducks to show to their little cousin.
You unwrap a hard block of Fimo and have to start working it with your hands before you can mould it. The children could do this but very quickly started to ask me and their Mum to work the next colour they wanted to use so it was ready for them to shape when they needed it. We were happy to do so and sat and had a chat whilst working the clay in our hands and both of us agreed that it was quite therapeutic!
The kids got into shaping the clay really quickly and soon learned that they could do really quite fine work using the colours. After completing their ducks (photo later on) they moved on to creating pencil toppers. The idea for these came from the packaging of the Starter Kit which clearly showed a selection of pencil toppers made from Fimo. Arty Girl (my niece) made a Chicken, whereas Lego Boy (my nephew) made a funny face.
Arty Girl working on her Chicken pencil topper
As time passed, Lego Boy got a little bored but Arty Girl carried on creating. She started to mix the blue and white colours together and found that she could make a sky blue shade of Fimo by doing so. We were quite surprised by this and I was really pleased to see that this worked as it gives the Fimo far more versatility. It is testament to Arty Girl's creative side that she came up with this all by herself.
Sky blue Fimo - all Arty Girl's own creation
The children really enjoyed playing with the Fimo and I was really surprised at their ability to create great little models quite quickly. I think the speed at which they could make their creations was excellent as it kept them interested for longer because they could see quick results. Lego Boy, especially, doesn't usually sit still like this for a long period but he sat using the Fimo for nearly an hour.
L-R Lego Boy's Duck, Arty Girl's Duck, Arty Girl's Chicken Pencil Topper and Lego Boy's Funny Face Pencil Topper
In creating the four models they probably used about a third of the Fimo so they have plenty of modelling clay left to make some more models. Arty Girl varnished the models and baked them in the oven for half an hour and the end result was great. Sorry, no photos as they have disappeared into school bags and bedrooms. We didn't use the Pets kit to create the models it showed but we did find the four blocks of Fimo contained in it to be really useful in creating our other models. I think, if we had just received the Pets kit then the children would have probably created cats and dogs but the addition of the Starter Kit meant that they had far more available to them and could get really creative.
I asked Arty Girl what she thought and she said that she really enjoyed using the Fimo and was surprised at how easy it was to use. She really liked the different colours and the ability to make her own colours by mixing two or more together. She was planning to make pencil toppers for her friends' Christmas presents. We all agreed that we thought that the packaging should contain more ideas for models but I will be showing them the Patch of Puddles Fimo pages to get some more inspiration.
I was really pleased to be able to share the Fimo with the children, and especially to introduce Arty Girl to another creative medium. She really loved it so I think I may buy her another kit for Christmas or her Birthday. I'm going to have a look at Craft Merrily for some inspiration. I may also sneak in a little jewellery kit for myself as I am really keen to have a play with the Fimo myself!
I was sent the two Fimo kits to review free of charge but the thoughts and opinions contained in this post are all my own and those of my niece.
