Ostheimer Creative Painting Set - Paint Your Own Toys

Paint Your Own Wooden Toys

Hi! I'm Hannah, part of Team Babipur and I have three boys aged 5, 8 and 11. We've been sent the Ostheimer Creative Painting Set to review and have some fun with over the summer holidays. This beautiful DIY painting set is the perfect project for kids on a rainy day, and we couldn't wait to get stuck in personalising our own unique animal figures.

Ostheimer Wooden Toys

We've been Ostheimer fans for some years now, collecting their heirloom quality wooden animal figures. There is something very special about these wooden toys, from their simplistic Waldorf design, the warmth of the natural wood and each beautifully hand painted.

I've been lucky enough to visit Ostheimer at the Nuremburg Toy Fair, and watch as an artist painted the wooden Heidi figure. Each artist has their own unique style making each figure individual with their own personal character. This German wooden toy company has been manufacturing handmade toys for over 80 years.

Ostheimer Creative Painting Set Review

The Ostheimer Creative Painting Set includes everything you need to paint your own wooden animals. The set includes five unfinished wooden animal blanks; a horse, cow, cockerel, cat and dog as well as a wooden palette holding five Stockmar paint colours, two paintbrushes, a water pot and two pieces of fine sandpaper.

What struck me first about this kids DIY craft kit was it's exceptional quality. The wooden animal blanks are a similar scale to the painted animals and made from solid maple wood, the wooden paint palette is large and the paints will last for this project and beyond. It's well packaged and presented making it a fab gift for craft loving kids.

Personalised Ostheimer Animals

The wooden animals are all cut out as blanks, meaning that they're in a natural unfinished state. The edges first need sanding smooth to give the Ostheimer animal its distinctive, tactile smooth shape. The boys used the sandpaper included in the set to smooth the edges.

Once the edges were smooth I suggested marking out any details with a pencil to work to. This gave them some time to think about their design before launching straight into painting!

This is obviously the bit they were most looking forward to, and couldn't resist having a go myself! The Stockmar paints are bright and easy to use and give a lovely finish.

We experimented with watering them down for a lighter, more transparent look, and building them up in layers. They also mix well to produce a range of shades and dry quickly, which is always a bonus if you have an impatient young artist...

I loved watching the children's creativity flowing, and the unique styles in which they chose to paint their animals. One animal to paint wasn't quite enough for my youngest artist, once he found his flow!

There are extra animals to paint available separately, which I'll definitely be adding to for Christmas or future birthdays. The paintbrushes are good quality, but we did find we needed a finer brush for more detailed work.

Creative Learning

Overall we loved the Ostheimer Creative Painting Set and will be adding pieces in the future. It was great to see the boys design and then carry out painting their animals, taking care to prepare each piece before painting.

Ostheimer toys are always beautiful quality, and this set is no different. We now have some special personalised animals to add to our collection for small world play.