List Price: $39.99
Sale Price: $19.49
Today's Bonus: 51% Off
This set is of extremely poor quality. Every material is cheap. Some people might try to rationalize that it's okay to give something like this to a child, because hey, kids don't care if the supplies are crap, right? Well, some kids do care, and the ones who don't know any better will still be frustrated that the materials don't "work" properly. The colored pencils don't even compare in quality to Crayola colored pencils, which aren't the best quality from an artist's standpoint. The pastels are junklike oily crayons...again, a set of Crayola oil pastels are of much better quality than these (Crayola actually makes a pretty good set of oil pastels, and Amazon sells them). The "watercolor cakes" are a complete joke. They're lightly glued in, and every time the case is closed, several of them fall out. The drawing pencils are so cheap that you'd do way better to just use a regular #2 school pencil to draw with. Ours also came with markers, which were the extremely low quality type you get when you buy a book from the dollar store with markers included...horrible. My kids were gifted two sets over Christmas, and while we appreciate the thought behind it, it was shocking how crappy the quality of ALL the materials was.
It's unbelievable that this set could be priced as high as $39.99. Right now it's on sale for $12.95, but honestly, it's still not worth even that much. Don't fall for the temptation to get "80 pieces" for just a few bucks. Those 80 pieces will either end up in the garbage, or cause your budding artist much frustration and disappointment.
Before I sound like an art-supply snob (I'm not!), let me say that this review is not in any way about me trying to sound superior and saying how the expensive professional supplies are superior to discount-store supplies. This is me saying that, while there *are* better options out there than Crayola-type supplies, this set makes Crayola-type supplies look like expensive professional supplies in comparison. I'm saying that these materials are absolute junk, not fit for anyone to use. I felt obligated to do a review, to save someone from wasting even a few bucks on something this bad. You'd do so much better to buy separate, decent sets of oil pastels, watercolors, colored pencils, and drawing pencils. None of these items are expensive on their own, anyway. Again, Crayola makes decent oil pastels and colored pencils. But for just a few dollars more, Michael's and Hobby Lobby sell brands that are artist quality, for reasonable prices; you could probably pick up all these supplies for less than $30 and have quality, lasting art supplies for your child (or yourself).
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