Review: OMY Colouring Posters

At the end of August a press release dropped into my inbox to advise me about some beautiful colouring products available from OMY Design and Play. After a browse on their website I realised that my children would like these products especially Miss E (aged 7 years) and my boy JJ (aged 10 years) and I said yes to a couple of products for review.

It is now about a 3 weeks after they have arrived and I have to be honest and say they have hardly been used. When they first arrived the kids saw them and 'ohhed' and 'ahhed' about how nice they were and my twin girls sat down to do some colouring straight away - one with pencils and one with felt tips (always different those two). They told me they liked the placements and they seemed to be enjoying themselves but realistically they didn't want to sit at the large dining table (where the placement would sit flat)  they wanted to sit on the floor and use the coffee table so they could watch TV at the same time. This made things a bit harder as the placements are bigger than an average size tray and they always use trays on the coffee table to protect the wood.

The actual placements are each 30 x 42cm and are a good quality thick paper, it is also recycled which is good. There are 24 place mats in a pack and we choose the City Map design, which means we had 6 each of the following - Paris, London, New York, Rio, Tokoyo and Atlas. We also could have chosen the Fantastic design pack. Each pack of 24 placements retails for £13.90 and that makes it about 60p per placement, which I don't think is bad value at all, given the good quality paper, the size and the intricate designs for colouring.

Postage in included in the price of the product and I love that, nothing hidden. That is normally the thing that puts me off buying online. There are also options to pay if you wish for courier service and to receive the product quicker than the standard 2-3 day delivery time.

We also received a London giant colouring poster, this measures 1.14m x 0.8 metres and is designed to go on a wall, the floor or a large table. We have not used this yet as I am saving it for a children's event I'm running in November. I will use masking tape to put it on the tiled floor and then lots of children will be able to colour it at the same time when we have messy church with a theme of love our world, God's special creation. The giant poster retails for £9.90 and again postage is included in that price. It comes folded into a small cardboard case and thus posts easily, you can see the folds when you undo it and that annoys me a little but my kids were not bothered by it when I asked them.

We have found that pencil, crayon and felt tip pens all work well on the OMY colouring products and that gives the child choice to use whatever they fancy. I do think these products are lovely if you want to sit down quietly and companionably with your child and do some colouring together, I can imagine Miss E and my mum doing this on a cold winters day. I think that has been some of the problem in the last few weeks, there has hardly been a spare moment.  The kids have all gone back to school, there has been tons of homework and we have had plans each weekend as well as visitors for a week. I know these products will come into their own when it is too cold or wet to venture out into the wonderful 220 acres that we live in.

You can see below the size of the giant poster and also the intricate detail of the poster.

There are six different designs of the giant poster and that means there is something to suit everyone and if this one is not large enough for you then you might be interested in the giant colouring roll this is 1.8 m x 1 metre and I think it would be fantastic as a centre piece for a birthday party, school holiday club or maybe Sunday club. It retails for £19.90.

In all these are really nice products but because they are so large it means they are not very portable and have not been played with as much as say a smaller colouring book that is easy to take to the car or a restaurant or a day trip out.

Disclosure: We received these colouring products free of charge for the purpose of this review. I have not been instructed what to write and I remain honest.