Fantastic Grimms Rainbow Semicircles & Grapat Ideas – Beautiful Animal Designs

Have you ever created flat lay designs with Grimms Rainbow? They are really fun to make, aren’t they? At home, we went a step further and started building with the Rainbow Semcircles, and we had a lot of fun with them as well. But when Grapat loose parts came into our lives and our play, then we went into a whole new level of creativity and fun.

In this post:

• Why we like creating flat-lay designs
• The Grimms Rainbow semicircles
• Our Grapat Mandala collection
• How we create them
• Our Grimms Rainbow Semicircles + Grapat loose parts creations!
  • Sea creatures
  • Insects
  • Birds
  • Mammals
  • Reptiles and… dinosaurs?
• Amazing accounts with wooden loose parts flat-lay art
• Start creating with Grimms Rainbow semicircles and Grapat loose parts!

Let’s get started!

Why we like creating flat-lay designs

To begin with, creating designs with semicircles is fun and imaginative. But adding loose parts makes it even better. They help us:

• be creative
• explore dimension and design composition
• patternmaking
• experiment with different shapes and textures
• play with color – either matching or complimentary
• mindfulness & relaxing
• practice patience and gain concentration skills
• learn to solve problems and develop new ideas
• slowing down
• activity is done together

… and they look stunning, and we feel proud of our hard work afterward.

The Grimms Rainbow Semicircles

The semicircles are a collection of 11 semicircles designed to pair with the original Grimm’s Rainbow. From red to purple, they go from big to small in this beautiful flat rainbow.

They are natural wooden toys made from birch plywood and color-glazed. It has been awarded the “spiel gut” seal, which means it has been tested with children and examined by experts with a positive result, encouraging them to “play well.”

We like to use them to build towers, color sorting, small world play, AND creating beautiful flat designs.

My son liked them so much that when he was one, he grabbed a crayon and drew on a couple of them 🙈 we’ve never been able to erase them. I always hide that side 😅 If you have a tiny toddler who can’t help himself with the crayons, I would suggest keeping them separated as the semicircles and crayons don’t mix well 😅

You can learn more about Grimms and discover our toy collection on this blog post – I hope it can be useful.

Our Grapat Mandala Collection

We love the Grapat loose parts at home. They are so beautiful, made with care, and feel great in our hands. They are wooden parts with different shapes and different shades of color.

Each Grapat Mandala box comes 36 pieces, usually of the same color and split into three shades (except the rainbow eggs divided into 12 different colors).

We have:

• Orange cones
• Red fire
• Pink flowers
• Red/pink petals
• Yellow Honeycombs
• Yellow / brown mushrooms
• Rainbow eggs
• Green Cones
• Blue small coins
• Blue drops of water
• Green trees
• White / Blue snowflakes
• Purple pineapples

I like matching the color of the Grimms semicircle with the loose parts that decorate them on top, but you can do whatever you want! My daughter likes to combine, like what she did for the mermaid tail, which I love.

Find out how else we play with Grapat at home 😉

How we make them

We start designing with the semicircles. We make up combinations until we like the design. Then, we search for inspiration to come up with it (photographs of real animals, illustrations, we try to reinvent the Grimm’s Rainbow animal designs – check out here – or look at other amazing creators online to spark inspiration).

Once we have it as we like, we just let our creative juices flow and have fun adding little wooden pieces from our loose part collection. (It is mainly Grapat Mandala, but we also love to add natural wooden hoops in different shapes and sizes).

Tip: All the semicircles must be entirely flat to add the loose parts on top to add texture and make the designs stand out more. To do so, I usually hide some wooden hoops or Grapat coins that serve as levelers and pillars. This way, we ensure that the whole semicircle is steady.

Finally, we enjoy our creation and take it all in… because we know it won’t last for long. (My son has too much fun creating chaos afterward once we give him the green light).

Our Grimms Rainbow Semicircles + Grapat loose parts creations!

After going over our creations, I realized they mostly fall under five categories:

• Sea creatures (I’ll include of the fantastical mermaid in this group)
• Insects
• Birds
• Mammals
• Reptiles and – dinosaurs? (if you can call them that 🤣 )

We will definitely need to explore other mammals and reptiles soon.

I hope these will inspire you to start creating all this flat-lay loose part art that is so beautiful to see and so fun and relaxing to create.

Sea creatures

Rainbowfish

Blue piranha

3 fish

Jellyfish

Whale

Mermaid

Insects

Butterfly

Green bug

Ladybug

Caterpillar

Trilobite – Prehistoric bug

Birds

Rooster

Owl

I’ve no idea what type of bird these are supposed to be – but clearly, they are birds 🤣

Mammals

Elephant

Hedgehog

Reptiles

Turtle

Other strange reptiles – maybe dinosaurs? or dragons? who knows 😅

Amazing accounts with loose wooden parts flat-lay art

There are so many unique and inspiring creators out there that you must check them out. Let me share with you some of the ones I enjoy following. Their creations make me smile, inspire me, and brighten my day. Some are flat-lays, and some are not, but I am in awe either way. They tend to use other loose parts or puzzle pieces that, hopefully, we’ll add to our collection someday. These creators’ imaginations and creations are mind-blowing. Please check them out!

• PandaMommyTeacher – Alice’s creations are so whimsical and fantastic. Honestly, they will leave you speechless. She creates mainly with Grimm’s wooden toys and Grapat loose parts.
• the.child.in.your heart – Sofia’s mandalas are exquisite, and she does some stunning flat-lays with characters from books that I think are amazing.
• Jen.ma.bu – Jen’s feed is colorful and filled with activity ideas that your little one will enjoy. I love what she does!
• Rainbow.construction – Find loads of colorful mandalas and flat-lays here.
• babipurgram – Finally, this is a fantastic account to find inspiration. Babipur (an amazing online retailer) has this account to post content created by their happy customers from all corners of the planet. The most amazing creations are packed in one place. I am very touched that they’ve reposted some of our creations ❤️

And there are so many more that are incredible! I just shared the ones I see the most lately. Please let me know if you know of other outstanding accounts to follow!

Start creating with Grimms Rainbow semicircles and Grapat loose parts!

If you haven’t done any creations with them, you must. It is excellent to develop cognitive skills, and it is great fun. So start copying one of ours! And I’m sure that will spark something else to try out!

And if you don’t have any of these, don’t let it stop you! Instead, make your rainbow from card-stock and use buttons, colored pasta, and any loose parts you may find at home to make your creations!

The important thing here is to be yourself and find a creative outlet for you and your children to connect and spend time together. I hope our creations will inspire you, and we’d love to see what you create!

Happy creative playing!*