No need to limit the numbers you paint by. These kits all include 8” x 6” canvases, (6) acrylic paint pots, a #2 brush, color key and guide, plus tips for blending colors--a major improvement in the paint-by-numbers game. Packaging is also an easel, and becomes a self-adhesive hanger, which gives you a big leg up on the original artists. You pick: Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Sunflowers or Monet’s The Japanese Footbridge.

This is an excellent starter kit for learning the rudiments of Chinese brush painting. Includes a lavishly illustrated 47-page instruction booklet, an 11-1/8" x 8-1/8" pad with (36) practice sheets and a few sheets of xuan, the vellum-like paper that brush-painting artists use, plus 5ml tubes of Chinese watercolors in white, indigo, burnt sienna, carmine and gamboge, a saffron color. Also includes (2) brushes, an ink stone and ink stick, all in a nice boxed set.

If you've got a smart phone, you can be a director. This fold-out, 14-3/8" x 7" x 7" tall stage comes with (5) backdrops, including one blank, a cardboard camera (phone) stand, (8) 2" bricks of assorted color clay and various punch-out props. Includes an 18-page booklet on making claymation, stop-action movies, with additional apps available online. This is how Spielberg would have started if he were 11 years old today.

Not just your average coloring set. A set so incredible it is has Premier right in its name. 29 Piece coloring kit that includes 24 coloring pencils, colorless blender, black illustration marker, kneaded eraser, double headed sharpener and coloring booklet. A must for every budding artist.

Sunprints (or cyanotypes, or photograms) are everyone's favorite photo-sensitivity experiment, from third-graders to graphic artists and fine artists. You pick: The Sunprinters are a dozen 3-15/16" square sheets of photosensitive paper, an acrylic backing sheet and instructions. The large Sunprint Kit has (15) sheets of 12" x 7-3/4" photosensitive paper plus a clear acrylic sheet of the same size. Great for classroom demonstrations, and can be used to make prints from photo negatives as well as interesting effects from opaque or translucent objects. All you add is sunshine and water.

This wooden Pirate Ship has a Jolly Roger sail and will be about 6-1/2” long when done. You’ll get everything you need, including glue, paints, a brush, cord and sails. For ages 5+. From Creativity for Kids®.

Call it the My First Trilogy kit. Our each is a boxed set of (3) 24-page, 3” x 4” blank books with blank hard covers. Includes (9) assorted markers and (6) sheets with a passel of ready-to-color stickers. You add one creative kid and a rainy afternoon. For ages 4+, from Faber-Castell’s Creativity® for Kids series.

Our Crystal Mini-Worlds growing kit from Klutz comes with crystal powder; 2” squares of air-dry clay in yellow, blue, pink and white; glue; (4) 8” chenilles (pipe cleaners); glitter; (20) punch-outs; thread; craft sticks; dye tablets; and (3) tiny figurines: a seahorse, a dragon and a unicorn. For ages 8+, includes a 48-page instruction booklet.

The Spirograph® lives! Think of it as doodling for people who like perfect geometric shapes. From Spirograph® comes this die-cast collector’s set of (9) spiro wheels, (1) ring, (2) pens, spiro putty with case, a storage tin and (6) design cards. Spiro putty, by the bye, holds the paper down so your perfect designs won’t have any ugly holes in them.

It’s a combo gardening and art set for the princess in your family. Comes with a 9” plastic dish, potting soil, (10) paint pots, (2) brushes, some pebbles, (2) resin mushrooms and the mandatory fairy house. Includes wheatgrass seed and beans, fabric flowers, glitter, purple pellets, plastic marbles, gems and a genuine poly-resin garden fairy. For royalty ages 7+.