Crafting with siblings: The 8-minute saga that inspired Freckles
Sibling crafting. That sweet, wholesome idea where children bond over shared creativity, learn the art of compromise, and express their inner Picassos with joy and harmony! Every parents dream when they procreate more than one!
I honestly think that ideal only exists in humans who have A. yet to have children B. won’t have children C. those with only one child.
If you’ve ever dared to open a tub of glitter with more than one child in the room, you’ll know it’s less "Art Attack" and more "Sibling Smackdown: Craft Edition."
Let me paint you a picture (pun fully intended) of a memory etched so deeply in my brain that many years on it is still as vivid as that crafternoon, an experience that helped start to form the future Freckles world.
💥 It began with a vision...
Sibling One arrived with a plan. A mood board (imaginary, but emotionally real). An idea to create something considered. “I want to make a flower meadow... using layers, texture, depth.” They asked for pastels, precision, and all the tissue paper.
Enter Sibling Two.
Fresh from a nap and spiritually aligned with a glitter tornado, they arrived with the energy of a sugar high raccoon and a vision that could only be described as “chaotic sparkle with aggressive pom-pom application.” Pastel? Absolutely not. They wanted “neon everything and sequins to the death.”
Cue argument #1: The Great Material allocation debate.
Apparently, there can only be one artist per household, I’m not sure who won this battle, the war had so much further to go this early incident has been banished from my mind.
✂️ Snatch, splash, scream, repeat.
Before I could even mediate the tissue paper tensions, there was snatching. SO MUCH SNATCHING.
Scissors, glue sticks, even the good felt tips — all treated like sacred artefacts in a craft-based power struggle, and then pens stabbed to death to ENSURE they were no use to anyone ever again.
Then came paint-cup-gate. Once we had found our groove and the painting was bringing the calm, sibling one reached for hydration station - sadly this was not the intended water cup but the the paintbrush water, because, of course, it was in a cup.
Sibling Two laughed so hard they choked on a Pom-Bear.
Sibling One burst into tears, convinced they were poisoned, and BEYOND angry at the laughter that had met their ears!
⏱️ All This in 8 Minutes and 23 Seconds
I mean it could have been longer, it could have been less, but those minutes felt like hours, and I think it will take longer in therapy to properly work through everything that happened in that well intended crafternoon.
🧩 Why This Memory Sparked Freckles
Moments like this—full of creativity, mess, and unpredictable sibling dynamics—are one of the many reasons why I started Freckles.
I wanted craft kits that parents could trust to bring joy and calm, not just mess and meltdown. Kits tested by kids, designed to keep the mess manageable and the fun high, with minimal plastic and maximum creativity.
I wanted to have the parents back, if you need to add dots to a toadstool, we’ve included a cotton wool bud, if you need to cover the table, flatten the box, if you want to create calm, have a sniff of the included lavender bag! Our kits are designed for moments of magic, not mayhem!
✂️ The Freckles Promise
Crafting should be fun, relaxing, and, on occasions, a little sparkly—but not a scene from a crafting war zone.
Our kits help turn sibling chaos into shared smiles, one low-mess project at a time, check out our craft kit range here.