100 Days of Tombow!

So I have a feeling that I'm probably past the 100 days mark of this marketing campaign. But hopefully the good people at Tombow will forgive me for that! I was contacted in May to ask if I'd like Holly's Arts and Crafts Corner to be a part of their campaign to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Tombow. I said yes and received the most wonderful box in the mail with these products in it:

I was excited to receive:
--Stamp Runner adhesive
--Dual Brush Pen Set, Groovy colors
--a set of the Irojiten Color Pencils, Woodlands colors

To be honest, I had no idea what I was going to do with these. The company just said create a project. They do have a blog and posts dedicated to the projects people came up with. There are some really beautiful things on there! But, it seemed like many of the people posting were scrapbookers. Or artists who really knew how to use and manipulate these products. I decided they must have looked through my blog before deciding to contact me. They should know that I mostly post my kids' projects. So I decided to stay with that idea, rather than go out of my element to create a project.

I thought about coming up with a nice project for my girls to do, but to be honest, I felt like it would be more fun and kind of an experiment to see what the girls came up with! They didn't have school today so I sat them down, gave them the supplies and told them the only rule was that they had to create something where they used ALL three types of products. I also asked them to really think about what they were going to make beforehand and to not rush through the project.

I was very pleasantly surprised with what they came up with! They both spent about an hour working on their project.

My 8 year old created a flower with a butterfly on it:

And my 10 year old created a tree silhouette with a sunset behind it:

My proud artists and their creations:

After they were done, I sort of interviewed them to see what they thought of the Tombow products when compared to our usual art supplies (Crayola and Mindware fine tip markers, and tape runners from Archivers or Michael's).

They LOVE LOVE LOVED the dual brush markers! They said they were so smooth and didn't tear up the paper at all while they were using them. They liked the unique colors for both the markers and colored pencils. Colors they don't usually get to use in their other sets. And the tape runner was a hit as well! They said it went on smoothly and you didn't have to press as hard as some of the other ones they've used. The dispenser itself seemed better quality as well. The adhesive didn't get gummed up on the side or go on wonky as some of the other tape runners we've used.

Though I haven't created any specific projects with these supplies....yet, I have used them to color in some of our wonderful Mindware coloring books and there is a marked difference in how they color compared to even Mindware's fine tip markers. I LOVED coloring with them! I believe we will be adding some of the other marker sets to our Christmas list this year.

Thanks Tombow for giving us these great supplies to play with! Happy 100th Anniversary!