The $17 Amazon Find I Keep Stockpiled for My Art-Loving Kids
Both of my kids love art. It doesn’t matter if it’s a coloring sheet they were given at a restaurant or a freestyle crayon and marker exploration at home, if it involves creating something colorful, they are into it.
I am very into this for them too, obviously, since it keeps their imaginations fired up and their fingers busy, especially when they’re home all summer. Their desks are well-supplied with crayons, colored pencils, and markers, all of which can last a long time if they remember to put the caps back on the markers, did you remember to put the caps back on the markers?! But the 30-page art pad? The 50-page pack of white paper? Used up almost immediately.
It was probably the sixth time in an hour that my then-4-year-old tiptoed into my office to take a single sheet of white paper from the printer, and the bajillionth time I said “Didn’t I just buy you girls paper?” that I realized: these kids are going to prevent me from printing out a return label ever again unless I figure something out.
And reader, I did.
The Drawing Paper I Buy In Bulk
I went looking for sturdy drawing paper I could buy in bulk, paper that would hold up to all the different mediums my girls use on a regular basis — crayons, markers, colored pencils, pastels, and watercolor — and my research led me to this bulk bundle of Sax Sulphite drawing paper on Amazon. The paper is medium weight with a textured side and smooth side, and it’s proven to be very versatile and to hold up well to (mostly) whatever my kids feel like creating.
And, at $17 for a 500-page pack of paper, that’s just over $0.03 a page, which is phenomenal, and makes me say “You’re telling me you can’t use this basically empty $0.25 page anymore because the line of the unicorn’s back is all wrong?” way less often now.
I keep the whole stack of paper in one of the 9.75″ x 13.75″ TJENA boxes from IKEA, which the girls keep near their desk so that the paper is always within reach. A 500-page pack lasts us, well, way longer than paper purchases used to last us, so that’s something!
This post was been updated from its original publication in June 2022.