Team-Building Painting Activities That Work In-Person or Remote
Paint Meee Craft · · 3 min read
Every team has sat through the "fun" activity that wasn't — the forced icebreaker, the trust fall, the escape room where two people do everything while the rest check their phones. A good team-building activity does the opposite. It gives everyone something to do with their hands, lowers the stakes, and sends people back to their desks a little more relaxed than they arrived.
A painting activity does all three — and a paint-your-own figurine session does it without a studio booking, wet canvases, or the assumption that anyone can actually paint.
Why painting works as a group activity
Shared, low-pressure making is one of the most reliable ways to get a team talking. There's no winner, no scoreboard, and no skill barrier — a first-timer and the office doodler both finish with something they're quietly proud of. Because hands are busy and eyes are down on the work, the conversation loosens up on its own. It's the same reason people open up on a long drive.
Figurines add one thing a flat canvas can't: everyone leaves with a small keepsake from the day, not a damp painting to carry to the car.
One kit per person — so it works in person or remote
Here's the part that makes this easy to plan. Instead of booking a venue and hoping everyone can get there, we ship one self-contained kit per guest. Every box holds a paint-your-own wood-textured figurine, a set of ready-to-use acrylic paints, and brushes — nothing else to buy.
That means the exact same activity runs three ways:
- In-person offsite — hand a box to everyone and paint around a table.
- Remote team — we ship a kit to each person's home and you paint together over a video call.
- Hybrid — the room and the remote folks do the same thing at the same time.
For distributed teams especially, a mailed kit is far simpler than trying to get everyone to one city on one day.
How a session works
It's built to be genuinely low-effort for whoever's organizing:
- You pick the date and headcount. We confirm timing and pricing.
- We ship one kit per guest — figurine, paints, and brushes in every box.
- Everyone paints and keeps what they made.
Group pricing is per kit and gets better as your headcount grows (there's a 10-kit minimum), so a bigger team costs less per person. You can see the tiers and request a quote on the Host an Event page.
A calmer alternative to paint-and-sip
If you've priced out "paint and sip" for team building, you already know the trade-offs: a fixed studio time, a canvas everyone paints the same way, and a format built around drinking. A paint-your-own session keeps the good part — a whole team making something together — and drops the rest. There's no studio to travel to, every person paints their own character however they like, and it works just as well with coffee at 10am as it does with wine at 6pm.
What your team paints
Half the fun is letting people pick their character ahead of time, so they show up curious. Reliable choices for a mixed group:
- The Cozy Capybara — universally loved, almost impossible to get wrong.
- A Clever Little Fox for the detail-oriented.
- Cottage Gnome Buddies — a little set that gives tablemates something to riff on together.
- A Wise Little Owl for the quiet perfectionist.
Browse the full lineup in the shop and pick a spread that fits your team.
Planning your session
Kits are made to order, so give it 2–3 weeks of lead time — a little more for large groups. We make everything in Barrie, Ontario and ship across Canada and worldwide, whether that's one box to your office or a box to every remote teammate.
Ready to turn your next offsite or all-hands into something people actually remember? Get a group quote and we'll come back with pricing and timing — usually within one business day.