This page used to be a review of another paint by numbers company. We have taken it down.
Not because there was anything wrong with them — but because a company selling paint by numbers kits is the wrong party to be reviewing another one. Whichever way that review comes out, it is not information you should be relying on. The old version happened to be glowing, which if anything makes the point better. Who owns the company is a separate question from whether the kit is any good, and worth keeping separate. Comparing kits on the things that matter is a more useful exercise than comparing brands.
What we can usefully offer instead is the checklist. These are the things that actually differ between suppliers, in the order they matter, and you can apply them to us as easily as to anybody else.
The seven things worth checking
1. Is the canvas rolled or folded?
The most important question and the one almost nobody asks. A canvas folded flat into a small box arrives with hard creases printed across the design, and they do not come out. Not with weight, not with time, and heat on printed primer risks damaging the printing.
Rolled in a tube costs more to ship, which is exactly why the cheapest kits do not do it. If a listing does not say, assume folded — anyone who rolls their canvases mentions it, because it is a selling point.
2. Are the paints sealed?
Acrylic in an unsealed pot dries out slowly in a warehouse. Vacuum-sealed paints arrive moist however long the kit has been in stock. A thickened pot is fixable with a drop of water and a stir. A pot that has gone solid is not, and it ends the project.
3. How legible is the printing, and what reference comes with it?
The most common complaint about numbered canvases at any price is that the numbers are small or faint. Ask what reference material is included. A large printed reference sheet — ours are 11x17 — lets you check a section without leaning over the canvas, which matters more than any other accessory over a ten-hour project. Some kits supply a small card, some the box lid, some nothing.
4. Can you buy more paint for that specific design?
One or two colors do most of the work on any canvas, and running low on one is the most common way a painting stalls near the end. Ask before you order whether replacement paint exists for that design specifically. For most marketplace kits the answer is no, and the fallback is buying an entire second kit for one pot.
5. What is the actual canvas?
You will see "linen" claimed a great deal, including in the version of this page we removed, usually alongside a line about linen being superior to cotton. Treat it skeptically. Genuine linen is expensive and rare at these prices, and the overwhelming majority of paint by numbers canvases — including ours — are cotton, which is entirely appropriate for the job. What actually matters is that it is properly primed so the paint sits on the surface rather than soaking in.
6. Custom orders: what are the real constraints?
If you are ordering a canvas from your own photograph, four questions decide whether you will be happy.
- What sizes are offered? Larger is easier to paint, because the section count is the same at every size and only the sections get smaller. Ours go to 18x24.
- What resolution do they need? A phone photo that looks sharp on a phone can fall apart printed at twenty inches.
- How many faces will it take? Every additional person divides the same canvas into smaller pieces. A group photo on a small canvas produces faces made of four sections each.
- Where is it printed? This determines how long you wait and how easily a problem gets fixed. Ours are printed in the United States rather than drop-shipped from overseas.
7. Can you reach a person?
The least glamorous check and the one that decides how a problem ends. Before ordering, look for a contact route that is not a form, and see whether anyone answers. A company that responds before you have given them money will generally respond after.
How to read the reviews
Reviews are the only way to see inside the box before buying, but the star average hides exactly what you need. A design people love will still carry manufacturing complaints, and that combination is what an average smooths away.
Ignore the rating and search the review text for four words: creased, folded, dried and numbers. Those four surface the faults that actually ruin a kit — a canvas with lines through it, paint gone solid, printing too faint to follow. Three or four hits on any of them and you have your answer.
Be equally wary of a page of five-star reviews with no photographs. Finished-canvas photos from buyers are the most reliable signal available, because they show print quality and coverage at the same time.
Our own answers, for the record
So this page is not just an abstraction. Our canvases are cotton, primed, and shipped rolled in a tube rather than folded. The acrylics are vacuum-sealed. Every design has a matching replacement paint set. There is an 11x17 printed reference in the box. Framed sizes arrive pre-stretched and ready to hang and include a wooden tabletop easel; the unframed canvas is trimmed close to the printed edge and suits mounting to a board rather than stretching. Custom canvases come in 12x16, 16x20 and 18x24 and are printed in the US.
The designs are licensed original paintings by named landscape and wildlife artists rather than generated templates, which is the main reason we have 39 designs rather than four thousand. Whether that trade is the right one is genuinely a matter of what you want.
Craft Master, the original brand is where that trade-off started, and it is the reason the format exists at all.
Common questions
Is paint by numbers a scam?
No — it is an ordinary product category, and has been since the 1950s. The variability is in manufacturing quality and in seller reliability, which is what the checks above are for. Running those checks on a specific seller takes about five minutes.
What if I paint a section the wrong color?
Let it dry completely, then paint over it in the right color, twice if needed. It will not show. Trying to fix it while wet lifts and smears the surrounding paint and makes the repair three times larger.
Should I thin the paint?
Only if it has thickened. A drop of water into the pot and a stir. Do not thin paint that is already flowing well — thin paint is what fails to cover the printed numbers, which is the single most common complaint about numbered canvases generally.
Do the kits involve mixing colors?
No, and any description saying otherwise is describing something else. The colors arrive pre-matched to the printed sections. Removing the mixing is the entire point of the format.
What order should I paint in?
Background to foreground, and one number at a time across the whole canvas — fill every section marked 7 before opening 8. Those two rules are all the ordering you need.
Our range is in the shop, and our guide to choosing an easy kit covers what makes a design forgiving.
