As we enter the holiday season, many people are looking for gift ideas for creative tweens. If your child or a child you know loves to make art, crafts, or experiment with new things, here are five gifts that will keep them entertained and inspired. From a new set of art supplies to a fun crafting kit, these craft- and art-related presents from FLOMO are sure to please any creative youngster.

And to prove we aren’t just making this up, we brought in an expert - a 10-year-old tween who absolutely loves all forms of arts and crafts! She was more than ready to try out all five of the products and give us her opinions. Read on to get all the details!

1 - Paint Your Own Ornaments Kit

About the Product:

This gift is the most festive and allows tweens to creatively decorate their own Christmas ornaments to hang on the tree and admire for years to come. The set includes ten different ornaments in the cutest holiday designs, like Santa, a snowflake, a Christmas tree, and a Christmas stocking.

It is a full DIY kit, which means it also provides tweens with a paintbrush and six paint pots in all of the basic colors they’d need to paint their ornaments. Everything they need in one easy-to-wrap box!

The Tween Review:

Our tween tester loved the variety of Christmas ornament shapes to choose from in this kit, as well as the fact that it comes with enough ornaments for her to keep some for her Christmas tree, and personalize some to give to her friends as Christmas gifts! The back of the ornaments provides the perfect place to write the date and who the ornament is for.

She also commented on how smooth the surfaces of the ornaments are, which makes for an ideal canvas for the paints. And speaking of the paints, she appreciated that they aren’t too runny or thin, and instead are the perfect thicker consistency to cover the ornaments in one coat. Lastly, the level of detail on the ornaments is just right. This memory-making kit is a win!

2 - Acrylic Paint Sets, Brushes, and Canvas

About the Product:

For the little Picassos out there who want a more open-ended painting experience, this acrylic paint set is perfect. Not only does this allow for a bit more imagination and creative expression, but there are tons of colors to choose from! Forty-eight to be exact: twenty-six basic colors, six fluorescent, eight metallic, and eight glitter colors. The paints are great on a multitude of materials, including paper, wood, or canvas. You can also get smaller paint sets, in the color of choice 10 pastels, 10 glitters, or 10 fluorescent as an add-on gift!

Speaking of canvas, don’t forget to include a couple in your gift, so your tween can get started right away! We are loving canvases in unique shapes - arches and rounds are particularly trendy in home decor, party decor, and design these days. This pack comes with two!

Lastly, you’ll want to add some brushes of different sizes and shapes to cover all of their artistic needs. And you can even make those fun and festive with glitter handles and iridescent rainbow handles!

The Tween Review:

The handles of the paintbrushes were an immediate hit with our tween tester. She loved how the iridescent rainbow brushes reminded her of mermaids, and using the glitter brushes with glitter paint added to the fun. In her words, “You can never have too much glitter!”.

She was also thrilled by the number of colors included in this paint set. When asked whether she preferred regular, pastel, fluorescent, metallic, or glitter colors, she begrudgingly picked pastels…but was relieved by the fact that she doesn’t have to choose since this set has them all!

As expected, she enjoyed the uniqueness of the round canvases, which instantly inspired her to paint things like planets and landscapes.

3 - Gel Pens and Journal

About the Product:

Remember the gel pen boom of the late 90s and early 2000s? As nostalgic products become more and more popular, we are seeing an increase in the popularity of gel pens again, making this a terrific gift for the trendy tween. Not only are they beginning to dress in Y2K style, but they are also writing in it as well!

This set comes with a whopping sixty total quick-drying, medium-point pens in a variety of bold and bright colors. Pair it with a journal and let your tween express themselves in colors to match any and all moods (of which tweens often have many!).

The Tween Review:

From the moment she pulled them out of the gift wrap, our tween tester was excited by the beauty of the motivational journal cover, reminding her that she is “simply magical”. She also remarked on the vast variety of gel pen colors, as well as how vibrant they all are. None of those boring ink pen colors are here! This is all about allowing for creative expression.

After testing them out in the journal, she was impressed by how easily they write and contributed that to the well-flowing ink as well as the smoothness of the journal paper. When she was done, she appreciated being able to keep the journal closed with its included band (privacy, please!), and that she can keep all her pens organized and together in their convenient packaging.

4 - Marker Set and Sketchbook

About the Product:

If your tween is more of an artist than a writer, a great twist on the pen and journal tween gift idea is the marker set and sketchbook. This pack of twenty-four non-toxic, acid-free, quick-dry alcohol markers packs a double punch, in that they are dual-sided. One side features a chisel tip, which is great for thicker lines and coloring in larger areas, and the other is a fine tip - perfect for outlining and writing. It’s like getting forty-eight markers for the price of twenty-four!

They come in a convenient and stylish wooden storage box, with a lid that also serves as a clipboard for holding drawing paper. Talk about double-duty and practical! Paired with a motivational sketchbook, this gift idea is sure to inspire and please.

The Tween Review:

What stood out most about the markers to our tween tester was how convenient the storage case is. She talked about how easy it would be to take the markers “on the go”, and use them anywhere, thanks to the clipboard top. No more losing your favorite colors or digging through a container trying to find the right one - every time she was done using a marker she replaced it into its helpful assigned slot and picked out the next one.

When it came to the sketchbook, she loved that it is hard-cover and spiral bound, yet the pages are easy to tear out, giving her the option of keeping her artwork safe in the sketchbook or removed to hang or gift to family and friends. The fact that it lays flat when open really made it easy to draw to her heart’s content without having to struggle to keep it open.

She also had to try using the clipboard and approved of its easy-to-use design and sleek surface.

5 - Arts & Crafts Kit

About the Product:

For the creative tween who loves all sorts of crafts, an arts and crafts kit is the best gift. They don’t want to be limited in their creativity, and with this kit, they won’t have to be! This do-it-all kit includes a wide variety of colorful craft materials, including pompoms, pipe cleaners, feathers, craft sticks, foam sheets, foam shapes, googly eyes, buttons, mini clothespins, sequins, and gems. It even includes scissors - a crafting essential. That’s an amazing one thousand two hundred and eighty-four total pieces, all packed up into a convenient and sturdy carrying case.

The Tween Review:

In the words of our tween tester, “This is enough to keep me entertained all day!”. She loved how colorful all of the supplies are, and how much she could make with the variety of craft supplies provided. This kit allows her to really let her imagination run wild, and she immediately began brainstorming ideas. Another plus she noticed? The scissors - she mentioned that it was helpful to have a set handy to trim the pipe cleaners she needed to make her festive red and green mustache.

She was also enamored with the craft supply carrying case, and how it is easy to find what she needs thanks to its transparency. When she was done crafting, she noted (and demonstrated) how easy it is to pack everything up and carry it around.

BONUS: Christmas Stocking Stuffer Ideas for Creative Tweens

Don’t forget stocking stuffers! You can find tons of smaller craft and art supplies that creative tweens will love from FLOMO. As an extra thanks for all of her “hard” reviewing work, we provided our tween tester with a Christmas stocking filled with multicolored retractable erasers, multiple sizes of scissors, glitter stickers, and a mini arts and crafts kit. We also included a few gift cards in festive holiday gift card holders.