The whole studio's yours.
Everything you need to plan and paint your nutcracker is free. The full Studio opens every tool all the way — the complete material & background libraries, the advanced gadgets, and a fresh handful of acorns every month for generating new materials, scenes & renders. Still $5.
No membership needed for a bag — same price for everyone.Every tool has a free door
Most of Paint My Nutcracker is just free. Only the generated art — custom materials, scenes, renders — runs on acorns. Here's the whole shape of it:
The craft-prep core
Plan your paint job, build palettes, pull real paint matches, print a coloring page, share your design, run a poll. The actual job — free.
The fancy tools
Preview even the premium materials and backgrounds for free. The full Studio opens the whole library so you can use them all you want.
Generated art
Ask the Studio to generate a custom material, a cozy-corner scene, or a lifelike render of your design. Each generation costs an acorn — it costs us real money to conjure. You start with a free handful.
Wait — what's an acorn?
Designing and painting your nutcracker is free and unlimited. An acorn is only for when you ask the Studio to generate artwork for you — a custom material, a scene, or a render of your design costs one acorn. (The one fancy exception: the deluxe, takes-a-few-minutes render is five — it's the treat-yourself one.)
You start with a free handful when you sign up. Earn more by joining in — running polls, adding to the community library — or grab a bag of acorns whenever the mood strikes. They're countable, visible, and yours.
What an acorn makes — yours to keep
Some of what you generate isn't one-and-done: a custom material or a background lands in your own library, and you reuse it on every design afterward — no more acorns.
(The third thing an acorn makes — a lifelike render of your design — is the showpiece just below.)
It's not locked — it's leveled up
Every tool has a free door. The full Studio just opens each one all the way. A few examples:
The one that compounds: the material & background library keeps growing — community designs plus every capture — and the Studio lets you use all of it freely, no acorns. That's the part a bag can't give you.
…and the same shape coming to more (host bigger Paint Together sessions, and so on). The rule: free gets you in, the Studio opens it wide — nothing slams shut.
From sketch to showpiece
Start with a theme, dress it in real materials, then render the whole thing into a showpiece. Each generation costs an acorn or two — the design itself is always free.
Ways in
Two kinds of thing here. The first two unlock the Studio — month to month, or a whole season up front. The last one is fuel: acorns for generating artwork.
The full Studio
$5/month
- Everything above, unlocked — the full growing library & all the tools, free to use
- A fresh handful of acorns every month for generating
- Cancel whenever you like
Season Pass
$25 once
- The same full Studio, for six months — right through the busy season
- 150 acorns up front — the whole season's worth, and they never expire
- Doesn't auto-renew. It just ends — nothing to remember to cancel
A bag of acorns
$5 once
- 45 acorns for generating materials, scenes & renders
- Never expire — keep them over the off-season
- No membership; same price for everyone
- Doesn't unlock the Studio's tools or libraries — it's just fuel
Paint once or twice a year? The Season Pass is probably your one. Painting all year? Monthly works out kinder.
Made in the Studio
A few designs from the community.
Questions? We got you.
The whole craft-prep job: planning, painting, palettes, paint matches, coloring-page prints, sharing, polls — plus a preview of the premium materials and a starter handful of acorns. You can paint a whole nutcracker without spending a thing.
Three things: the complete material & background libraries to apply freely (no acorns), every tool opened all the way (Pattern Creator, Cozy Corner placement, live Etsy product search, multi-nutcracker scenes, the back view), and a fresh handful of acorns every month for generating. No per-feature gates — everything's included for $5.
The monthly acorns that come with the Studio are use-it-this-month. Acorns you buy or earn never expire — they keep over the off-season. We always spend the soonest-to-expire ones first, so your bought stash lasts longest.
Yep. The full Studio is $5/mo, everything included, with a generous monthly handful of acorns. Metering only the generated stuff is exactly how the price stayed $5 while we added a pile of cost-heavy features.
Grab a bag of acorns anytime — $5, no subscription needed, same price for everyone, and bought acorns never expire. Whether you're a subscriber who had a big month or you just paint once a season, it's the same quick top-up.
Never. Everything you make is yours to keep, print, and share — subscriber or not, now or after you cancel.