Chalkola Pens and Ideas to Aid Creativity

Are you a stationery fan?

I have always loved stationery, especially stationery that comes in a spectrum of colours like Chalkola. I remember spending hours organising my pencil cases as a child. Yes, I know, I’m a bit special! If you love stationery and are looking for resources can be used by children and adults alike then this post is for you.

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Chalkola Chalk Pens

We’ve been using Chalkola Chalk Pens for a few years now. I love the vibrancy of them and the range of colours. I’m an asthmatic so traditional chalk poses an issue with chalk dust, so chalk pens are a great alternative. Yes, they’re more expensive, but they last a really long time and don’t snap and get trod on! I love the bold colours on the rockets in the little set up above.

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

― Maya Angelou

I do love the wise words of Maya Angelou. I’ve read a poem by her recently that I often return to again and again. You can see Maya performing her poem in my post – A Poem A Day in December for the Family.

Here you will find some of my chalk pen makes used in small world play set ups. Once you’ve let a layer dry you can keep building up different colours on top of each other for different effects. They’re also incredible easy to write with as the precision with the pens is so good. They don’t leave your hands messy like traditional chalk either.

Chalkola Watercolour Brush Pens

So, having used and loved the Chalkola Chalk Pens before, I was more than happy to test out one of their newer products when asked. I was sent Chalkola Watercolor Brush Pens.

They come as a set of 28 water colour brush pens, 2 water brush pens and a pack of 15 sheets of water colour paper. Look how pretty all those colours are.

Chalkola Child Friendly

As I’ve previously mentioned, I love stationery. Unsurprisingly, my daughter Floss is following in my footsteps and loves stationery too. We do share, but I also have my secret mommy stash too!

Chalkola are one of the brands I’m happy to share as they are really child friendly and robust enough that they can be used in whatever creative way Floss chooses, while still being perfect for projects I may have. The Chalkola Watercolor Pens are non-toxic and also odourless.

Developing Creativity

Opportunities to be creative are so important for our children. For some children creating and making comes very naturally, for others they need a little support. Floss is now four and loves nothing more than getting immersed in her creations. Although, it hasn’t always been this way.

Recently, Floss went through a stage of being very reluctant to put pen to paper. She’d ask me to draw instead and worried about things looking right or doing things ‘wrong’. Here’s some of the things we did to help her overcome these fears.

Made a little creative space in our home for her to be creative.
Changed around the resources and continued to rotate so there were new combinations of media and materials.
Spent time being creative alongside her especially modelling making adaptations.
Explored the world of process art more. This is a great book Art Workshop.
Read books such as The Dot and Ish.
Thought carefully about the language we used when talking about what she created. Check out the last part of this blog post for how to talk to children about their art in a non-judgement way.

December 2022 Update

Floss is now six. Re-reading the above regarding Floss’s reluctance to create and worrying about making mistakes seems such a long time ago. The steps that we took made a huge difference to her confidence.

She is now happy to experiment and make changes. She can still feel frustrated when things don’t go the way she would like but we talk through this together. What we never get now is a reluctance to begin.

My advice to anyone else in a similar situation would be to be calm and patient and allow children the time, space and resources to be creative.

Chalkola Watercolour Pens

Next let me tell you a little more about the pens. The nylon tips give excellent precision, yet allow for beautiful wide brush strokes as well. I do love that the caps have a little lip on them so they stay put and don’t roll off the table; very important when you’ve got little ones. They’re ideal for use in colouring books, especially those detailed books you can get. They have a wonderful, soft flow when you use them.

The water brush pens are pure genius. They are perfect for blending and allow you to dilute the vibrancy of the colours. You twist at the middle of the pen and fill up the water barrel. Gently squeezing the water reservoir allows the water to follow out faster.

The video below shows how you can use the watercolour pens in tandem with the water pens. Chalkola have a brilliant YouTube channel with lots of demonstrations and tutorials for their products. Well worth checking out – I get so mesmerised watching things like this. Do check out the Big Ben tutorial.

Certainly not the standards of the artist above, but below is a little video I’ve made showing how simple they are to use and how I’ve used the water pens to be able to get more of a watercolour effect on the paper. You can use them wet on dry or wet on wet.

Chalkola Colours

There’s a myriad of colours in the range. With the blending tool you can get a plethora of colours just like you would when using paint watercolours. For Floss I often reduce the number of pens I put out for her so that she can explore colour mixing more. If this is something you are looking to invite more of then giving the three primary colours only can be really interesting to see what colours they make.

Would I Recommend Chalkola Pens?

Absolutely yes! As I said earlier in the post, we’ve been purchasing Chalkola Chalk Pens for a while now and thoroughly enjoy the extensive range of colours, vibrancy and ease of use. The Chalkola Watercolor Pens are a dream and as a family we’ve all enjoyed experimenting with these.

Chalkola Watercolor Pens would be an ideal travel idea for keeping kids entertained in restaurants or when going on holiday.

They’d also be perfect for nature studies to take out with a journal to paint the wonders of the natural world. Floss and I usually photograph things that we see and come home and do watercolour paintings of the images we’ve taken. We’re looking forward to taking these out with us next time for some ‘on-set’ creativity.