Despite the recent sunshine, we have had a couple of rainy days. Over half term we had a rainy afternoon and decided to spend it doing some crafts. I had put aside Disney Pixar Cars 3 Aquabeads Playset for a rainy day, so we decided to crack it open and make our own Lightning McQueen!
The Disney Pixar Cars 3 Aquabeads Playset contains a table tray, a bead palette, four templates, a sprayer, a bead peeler and 7 different colours of beads. The set is suitable for ages 4+ and it was just the thing for my 7 year old. Aquabeads (and any bead craft) can be quite fiddly for little fingers, but this is what makes them excellent for fine tuning hand-eye co-ordination and working their fine motor skills.
There are four templates to follow in the set; Lightning McQueen, Cruz Ramirez, Mack and Jackson Storm. The templates each show two sections of car, one is the main body and the other is a section which you make separately and then stick on with water once they’re both dry. This makes them into 3D characters.
The boy look his time making Lightning McQueen. He struggled a bit to put the individual beads on the board, so I lent him my rainbow bead pen from my Aquabeads Deluxe Studio set and then he just rocketed through. He spent around 40 minutes carefully putting all the beads on the board with the template underneath. Then he sprayed it with water and we left it to dry for the afternoon.
The instructions say that you can peel the beads from the board after ten minutes; but we find if you leave them for longer, then they set a little better. Once they were dry and peeled from the board we then sprayed Lightning McQueen all over and fixed the 3D part to his front; then we left him to dry a little longer.
He was pleased with how his Lightning McQueen turned out. He was easy to make and Aquabeads are a really lovely rainy-day craft for both kids and adults alike.
The Disney Pixar Cars 3 Aquabeads Playset costs around £20 and is available from a wide range of retailers including Hobbycraft.
