Deep in the kitchen there's a cupboard, dubbed the cupboard of doom.  It's official title is the craft cupboard.  Open it at your own risk for the fruits and tools of expression will literally rain down on you.  Painfully.

Thing Two and The Dude love crafting and in my more masochistic moments the cupboard is declared open.

There's all sorts of odds and sods in there, including the bundles of previous creations.  To The Husbands disdain I have an inability to discard any scrap of baby The Spawn so much as scribble on before they start school.

So what are the main crafting staples (excuse the pun) in there?





Top 10 craft essentials every child should have in their craft supplies:



1. Glue.  Even better, an assortment of glues from the humble stick for the less messy moments to good old PVA.  Then there's the Mother of adhesives, Mod Podge, an absolute must for decoupage projects and glitter projects such as glitter wine glasses.  We especially like the sparkly one.



2. Glitter.  Satan's own creation.  It breeds.  You'll find it in places you never even knew existed several weeks after it was used.  Even the cats don't escape unscathed, or should we say unglittered.  Yet at the end of the day, despite it's noxious evil ways, everything is better with glitter.  It's hard to not like glitter.



3. Scissors.  Not just any scissors, it's best to have several types so they can cut patterns too.  All kids love to cut, mine spend hours happily snipping paper into, erm, smaller bits of paper.  It's apparently incredibly engrossing.  I won't complain,  it keeps them quiet.  At least whilst cutting paper and being all arty they're not cutting hair.  We especially love this fab trio of scissors from Hobbycraft.  Utilising scissors is also incredibly useful for developing fine motor skills



4.  Paint.  I like to keep two types in, the really fun messy stuff that I only get out when I forget to take my medication and the less messy compromise of the paint pallets.



5.  Brushes.  It's fun to have a variety of brushes in of different sizes, children love the independence of choice and selection and the creativity of experimentation.  Try intermingling sponge paint applicators among the brushes too.



6. Glue spreaders.  Many a time, stick glues simply aren't adequate for everything your children want it to do. Other glues may have applicators but they gunk up or the lids fall off and you have a gluesplosion.  We like to saved small yogurt pots and decant pva glue into these with glue spreaders.  It gives them more accuracy and greater to cover larger areas without swamping their project.  You can try using paint brushes, yet since your most likely the person who ends up cleaning them i'd steer clear otherwise they're too stiff to paint with.



7. Paper.  It's no use having all these craft goodies and no paper.  It sounds obvious yet we have paper stealing elves in this house so have been caught short before with a table set up ready to craft only to find there's no paper anywhere to paint on or glue on.  If your children have free access to paper for writing/drawing purposes always make sure you squirrel some away with your paint and glue supplies etc. Why not buy patterned or coloured paper?  Also it's useful to have a supply of card in.  Personalised cards for birthdays etc always trump shop bought one and also keep your children entertained.



8. Crayons, felts, chalks.  Crafting and art doesn't have to always be an event, the craft supplies are kept in the cupboard of doom yet they have free access to felts and crayons and chunky chalks for outside and can be used any time and with minimal supervision.

9. Recycling.  One of The Dude's favourite activities to do at school is junk modelling.  Keep toilet roll tubes, egg boxes and cereal boxes etc  for them to create houses, cars and robots with.



10. One of my favourite things is self adhesive collage stickers.  There's minimal mess yet plenty of opportunity for making fun pictures and scenes on paper/card.  All kids love stickers.

So what are your Craft item staples in your house?

* Hobbycraft kindly provided us with some of our craft favourites for the purpose of this post, yet all opinions expressed are my own.  Look out for following posts featuring these products too over the summer and why not pop over to craft essentials at HobbyCraft for some more inspiration?