ALEX Toys Artist Studio My Art Spinner

Santa gave this to my almost-four year old daughter last Christmas and it rapidly became the hit of the season. When I was her age I had a similar art spinner, though mine was a third-generation hand-me-down that never worked exactly right. Even so, it was one of my favorites too. :-)Out of the box you get the spinner itself, five bottles of paint, two small bottles of glitter, a bunch of cards (both small and large), a plastic "splash ring" (more on that later), and the requisite instruction guide. Installation is very simple; remove one screw to access the battery compartment, insert one "C" cell, close it up, insert a card, set the splash ring in place, turn it on and get to painting. The card is held in place by the four corners, each slipping into a little nub on the green spinning platform. There are eight such nubs on the platform, four to accommodate each card size.The main unit is about the size of a notebook and is somewhat cheap feeling, but has withstood a month of fairly regular use with no complaints. the base structure of the unit is purple with the accents (wheel, motor cover, power switch) in lime green. A beefy built-in handle allows the unit to be carried by the child. The power switch is located in the opening between the handle and base which means accidental power-ons will be pretty much nonexistent. The green spinning platform is held in place by a single center pin via friction and it works well. Given sufficient and appropriate pressure you can remove the platform without damage which makes cleanup easy.The main unit has five built-in receptacles to hold paint and glitter. Here's my first complaint; there are five bottles of paint provided, but only three receptacles for them. Why? I can sort of understand if there were four receptacles; the child would naturally be using one bottle and would simply swap one bottle as needed. But three? I see no logic there, only laziness. They did manage to get the number of receptacles for the glitter correct, however.Another minor complaint: Alex Toys clearly expects this to be a portable toy, given the fact that there is a built-in carrying handle. However, the receptacles for the paint and glitter don't hold the bottles tight enough to actually be portable. They fall right out as soon as the toy is lifted. What's the deal here, Alex Toys? (TIP: I was able to overcome this by putting little Velcro dots at the bottom of each receptacle, with the mating Velcro dot at the bottom of each bottle. For the two paint bottles that have no receptacles I attached Velcro to the sides of two of the paint bottles and to the flatter sides of the unit, so the paint bottle stays attached there when not in use.)The paints are reasonable consistency, have good opacity, and mix well into one another to create different colors. Rather than the standard fare primary colors that you find in most children's paint sets, these colors are more reminiscent of those glow-in-black-light posters you'd find at places like Spencer gifts, an effect not diminished by the fact that some of the supplied cards are black on one side. Supplied colors include blue, pink, green, red and yellow. The included glitter is standard gold and silver, each in a small vial that looks absolutely nothing like a crack vial from the 80's so don't even think about that. The paints are in non-refillable bottles so you have two options when they run out: Fork over $15 (yes, more than 50% the cost of the whole toy!) for the  My Art Spinner Refill  kit, or get creative with refilling the empty bottles. A small syringe and some lightly watered down finger paint will work to refill the empties. You'll need to experiment with paint consistency to get it right though; too thin and it will spray everywhere when trying to paint, too thick and it won't give you that nice radial-splay look you're going for. Note that the official refill kit doesn't include glitter, but it's just plain ol' glitter that you can get at any craft store anyway. For replacement cards you can use the refill kit, or you can just cut down some suitable card stock. Semi-glossy paper seems to work best.Battery life is very good with one "C" cell battery easily lasting a month of near-daily use with no noticeable fade on motor power. The motor is quiet too, virtually inaudible at a distance of about five feet. One small annoyance about the motor is that it has virtually zero torque. I recognize the necessity of this in order to keep children's fingers safe, but the trade-off is that you pretty much can't use anything other than drip paints in your creations. Try to use, say, a magic marker on the spinning card and the motor will instantly slow down to a crawl as it tries to overcome the pressure of the marker. I had similar results with even a small paint brush and watercolor paints.The "splash ring" is a special case. It sits on top of the base and keeps paint splatter (outside of the unit) to a minimum. In practice, splatter is pretty much nonexistent provided your artist doesn't go nuts with the paint so the splash ring does its job nicely. The problem is that the ring is really, really, REALLY cheap clear plastic. At first glance it looks exactly like a piece of packing material that you'd throw away, and in fact I did exactly that when I first unpacked it. Alex Toys would seem to agree with this because there's a sticker on the ring that says that it's part of the toy and not packing material. After just one too-quick tug by my daughter part of the ring broke - not enough to make it useless, but it was annoying nonetheless. Clearly, this is a toy piece that is in need of a serious redesign.Cleanup is generally easy. When wet the paint wipes off easily with a little soap and water or glass cleaner. When dry, it acquires a slightly rubbery feel and can be peeled off the plastics with a minimum of effort. For more severe cleaning a trip to the kitchen sink provides a good cleaning environment. It's important to note that the paint dries fairly quickly, and when dry the paint is fairly permanent on porous surfaces like clothes and carpeting. When wet you can quickly soak it and scrub it and get 98% of it out, but once it's dry you pretty much have to live with a stain.Overall, this is an excellent toy with just a few quicks and shortcuts that make it a little annoying, but not annoying enough where I wouldn't recommend it to other parents (and kids).

Purchased this for our nephew's 4th birthday party. Ordered 2 so we could wrap one for his gift and use one for the party. Good thing, as the paper and paint were missing from 1 unit. I had ordered extra paint, and cut more card stock after printing his name and date and a place for the artist to put their name on the back. I set up both machines at the party and the kids took turn creating their art, which was hung up on a bulletin board to dry and so everyone could see. Once dry, the cards were flipped over on the board, so the names could be seen, and was placed at the front door. As the kid's left, they picked up their souvenir. I heard every kid asked their parents if they could get their own spin art machine.I recommend adult assistance, also, let the child put 4-6 drops of different color paint on the card, then turn on the machine. Once it gets to speed, add another 6 drops as it spins. Remove the card from the machine. Add glitter, shake off excess and hang to dry for about 45 minutes.Cleanup took 3 minutes - Handwash the top in the sink with the spray nozzle and water. Dry paint will easily peel off the plastic

I bought this to use in our summer's kid-carnival party. They LOVED using it. Actually, they were fighting over who got to go next. I read several reviews before deciding which spinner to purchase, and think I really did make a good choice. This one is easy to use, has enough battery power to spin nicely (instead of hand powered). Of course people complain that you need to buy replacement paper/paint. But really, if your creative, make your own paint squirt bottles. Fabric paint from Michaels works good. And just save some of the cardboard as a template to cut out more paper from cardstock. One piece of advice... make sure you have your paint area covered nicely to prevent paint from spilling. They were so excited to show everyone their creations, that many of them ended up on my kitchen floor. But, it did wipe up easily!

Ok so it’s certainly a messy craft but that is to be expected, the paint is a bit more difficult to remove than washable. My 4 year old loves using it, battery operated means we can bring it to table with newspaper so we keep the mess contained! The button is a little stiff so maybe an older child would struggle to use it independently. The neon paints are a bit thick and glob but the primary colors work great and spin into designs nicely. 3 stars because the motor putters out after about 3 paper changes as the weight of the paint in the well becomes too much resistance. So you need to wash it out every 10 mins.

This toy reminds me of one that I had when I was a child. I recently purchased this for my 2.5 year old, who needs help to use it, and 4 year old, who can operate it by himself.It is an entertaining toy, and for the price, not a bad value. The spinner works, but the paint that comes with it is very small. Be prepared to buy additional paint. It also requires a size C battery, that it does not come with.Overall, the toy is a good value, and does provide good entertainment. It is also a good activity to have at a party, because kids get to take home a personalized souvenir.

I had a spin art toy as a kid and was really looking forward to sharing the fun with my kids. This certainly reminded me that they just don't make things like they used to! The splash guard is really flimsy -- good thing they put a label on it or I would have thrown it away. The paper is small, the motor is not very powerful and the paints are very low quality. There's just not enough pigment in the paints -- when you use them on the black paper, they really just disappear. Still, we'll use it and stick the art up on the refrigerator and my kids won't know the difference. But I will.

You think it won’t happen to you; you see the negative reviews and you think, “no, it can’t be that bad. These people must be incredibly nit picky.” You think that, and then you order it in the hopes that you’ll be the exception. Then low and behold, it arrives and it is so cheaply made, so poorly designed that you can’t even unscrew the back to put the batteries because the thread of the screw is busted. Finally you decide you can do without the battery backing plate, so you break it open, put in you batteries, switch it on and boom! Nothing. Nothing happens. You jigger it, change batteries, replace the back, and finally throw it against the wall in frustration. I loved my old paint spinner, and had hoped this would be a good replacement but I was bitterly disappointed. It’s utter rubbish. Complete trash and a waste of money. Seriously, don’t buy this thing. I thought my experience would be different, but I was mistaken. Do yourself a favour and stay away from this product. You’ve been warned.

Fairly flimsy and children need supervision. The paint was all used up in one afternoon by an enthusiastic three year old but he did make some lovely pictures.

The kids love it. Makes great pictures. I have to adjust the unit itself before each use before it will start to spin. It seems like you can't push the spinning part all the way flush with the base. It has to be slightly up. Other than that good!

Excellent deal $20 on Boxing Day. Kids love this at my school.

Hard to find in stores... For me anyway. She creates with this daily. Also enjoys cutting her own circle to paint on. We also have started framing as presents for grandparents and gift tags. Cleaning is very easy.