Thin Stix - Mess Free Paint - Review

My kids love doing all sorts of art projects but many of them can get quite messy. As a busy mom, I don't always have time to supervise those projects, especially as often as they want to get the art supplies out. But the folks from The Pencil Grip, Inc. have created the perfect product every house with young kids need, Thin Stix 6pk of Classic Colors.

Anyone who has ever supervised young kids with paints knows just how messy they get. Usually you have to have them wear old clothes or a smock, cover the table in newspaper, have little cups of water that inevitably get spilled everywhere. And of course children love seeing how much what they can mix with the paint, soaking through the paper and on and on. 

Thin Stix remind you of markers due to their tubular shape but they are filled with solid, tempura paint. The paint is non-toxic and easily wipes off of hands and surfaces with simple soap and water (or baby wipes if that's all that is handy!)

The best part? Not only do you not need any water, the paint literally dries in 90 seconds! Talk about fast drying! That means there is no smudging or needing to find a place to leave those projects dry for hours. The paint stix can be used on a variety of surfaces in addition to paper. They work great for making posters, can be used on wood, rocks, even hard boiled eggs.

Due to the timing of this review, it fell over Easter so we decided to put the Thin Stix to the test and give my kids another option for coloring their eggs besides dipping them in dye (which stains hands unlike the Thin Stix).

The paint glided on easily and by simply rolling them around, they could even blend the paint a bit to create a marbled look. We also noticed they didn't bleed through to the egg like the dyes sometimes do.

We recently were given a bunch of river stone to use for landscaping and of course my little ones started picking out some stones they wanted to play with. A friend gave me the idea to have them paint their stones to make an outdoor tic tac toe board and use the painted stones as the pieces, so that's what we did. A simple game using their own stones they each painted.

We set some tape on a recently cut down tree stump to make a flat outdoor game area.

While this product is geared for younger children, I can tell you my older teens and their friends were even caught doodling with the Thin Stix. One of my girls 18 year old guy friends drew this crab & lighthouse in a matter of minutes.

Thin Stix come in a variety of different color sets including neon and metallic. There are also a thicker version called Kwik Stix that act the same way but are more like the size of a glue stick. You can check out my previous review of them. Both kinds of mess free paint also come in different quantity packages, all the way up to a 24 count. They can be purchased on Amazon as well as at Toys'r'us. My children and I high recommend Kwik Stix in all their varieties!