Kids Colouring Day: Artline Stix

The time has come for kids to not only use pens for colouring but to build things with them! Shachihata Europe Ltd. is the manufacturer for Artline and X-Stamper brands in the UK and Europe, having launched all the way back in 1925. It is a worldwide-renowned company with subsidiaries in four continents, well known for its high quality, cutting edge technology and environmentally friendly manufacturing.

There are hours of fun and endless possibilities in Artline's new Stix range, which combines pens with Lego-type studs which can snap together, enabling kids to create not only on paper but with the pens themselves. There are packs of connectors available, which allow the pens to spin, click and bend, and there are special characters that can be collected and attached to the studs. These characters all have names and personalities, all found on the Stix website which features printable colouring pages, instructions to build, an interactive Play Club to join and more.

Drawing pen: ideal for writing, drawing outlines, and getting into small areas

The pens are available in the UK in packs of 4, 8 & 16 (drawing pens also sold in singles), and there are 3 different nibs: brush, bullet and fine. They are all identical in make up, the only difference being the tips.

Colouring Marker: can be used for medium sized areas

Brush marker: Similar to a paintbrush, this is great for colouring large swatches

The fine liner gives a teeny line of 0.4mm, the bullet nib 2mm, and the brush tip between 1 & 8mm. The ink is waterbased, washable and non-toxic. They are recommended for age 3-9 years old, but I'll be using them regularly as I love the colour laydown and the paint-like strokes of the brush tip.

The ink flows so smoothly on the paper, and feels great to colour with. There's minimal feathering even when you go over the same place a few times, so kids will find them easy to use for great results. The brush pen is far better than the bullet in my opinion; I find the latter too hard (I'm not a fan of bullet nibs in general for this reason).

Character packs

Connector pack

The 16 colours are bright and juicy, all of them labelled with their name and type of nib. There are 4 different blues which I found quite odd; it would have been better I think to have another shade of green so there would be 3 of each.

Here's a house my son drew with the fineliners and coloured with the other pens, and an arch my youngest son made with the connectors and characters.

I coloured this mandala with the brush pens. As you can see the colours are really bright and vibrant. I'd definitely recommend buying at least one pack of these for the kids, they're sure to love them! My boys really enjoyed making different things out of them just as much as they did colouring!

Mandala taken from Zen Coloring by Deirdre Dixon

These products were given to me in exchange for an honest review. You can find them on Tiger Pens.