The September box actually arrived almost immediately after the August box came in the mail, meaning I had to pay the before mentioned taxes again -.-” If you want to know more about the situation take a look *here*. But hopefully, this will be the last box with those extra costs and I try not to let it ruin the opening of the box for me 😉 Let’s take a look inside together!
In the box, we get an A6 daily planner with a beautiful yet simple mountain-type design, similar to the front of the box. We also get 3 birthday greeting cards with fittingly designed envelopes, an A5 art print which I like the most out of all we have gotten from Papergang this year! Last but not least we got some sticker markers with different designs and 6 differently colored felt tip markers.
I am very happy with this box, everything can be used together and I like the designs and earth colors they used very much 🙂 Like I said the print is my favorite up till now and the sun going up and down in the sticker marks is pretty cute 😛 What is a bit disappointing are the felt tip markers, they are very reminiscent of the german Stabilo markers, but they feel a bit cheap compared to those. Having “Papergang” written on them has a nice touch, but not if it’s in exchange for quality, you know? Aside from that, there is nothing to complain about 🙂
After many many troubles, about which I might even make a post on its own, my august Papergangbox FINALLY arrived! Actually, I have not that much to say about it, other than I really like the colorful block design on the front, let’s take a look inside!
In this month’s box we have an A4-ish Notebook with lined pages, an orange pencils case with a chunky metal zipper, a pack of A5 sticker sheets in 2 different designs, a ballpoint pen with black ink, and 3 erasers with rounded edges 3 different marble effects and printed quotes.
I have to say that I am VERY happy to finally have gotten a pencil case for all of the pencils I got in my previous boxes. To be honest, if we view it as a year-long subscription, I would have liked the pencil case earlier, to be able to store everything I will get from early on. But asidefrom that, I have no complaints about it, the pencil case feels very nice, it looks great and it’s spacious^^
Let’s talk about the other items in this box 😉 I do like the marble design of the erasers very much and I know quotes are kinda OhDeers signature trade, having them on books, pencils, and erasers for sure, but I feel like the marble design would have been cool on its own. I do like the design of the ballpoint pen too, even though it feels a bit cheaper than other supplies from them and I would have loved a marble design on it too^^
What is really confusing to me is the notebook, because when I saw the sticker sheet I thought of bullet journaling, which was (or is?) a great idea for a boxes theme! Even though I would have liked some more pens to highlight text or use different colors for headers and stuff. But what I would really need is a BLANK notebook, to be fully free in the designs I want to make, to stick my stickers everywhere I want. With the lined notebook we got, I feel somewhat restrained, because I can’t use all the space exactly as I want, without the lines guiding. And bullet journaling for me is all about not being guided and doing my own thing.
So, the theme, if there was one, seemed a bit lose to me. If it was about bullet journaling we have not got enough pens and the wrong notebook. If it was about taking notes in general, I feel like the stickers are too detailed. And why do we have cool erasers but no graphite pencil to go with them? Maybe I am searching for something again, which is not even there intentionally, which would be a wasted opportunity for me. But all in all, I was still very happy about the box, mostly because I finally got my pencil case 😉
And do you remember the “extras” I was promised for the delay of my packages, this one in particular? Well, I think that I have gotten them, but they are not what I had expected. I guess I should not complain about free stuff and I do like some of it, I just had something different in mind. I got 4 different cards for different occasions, I love the fox the most but sadly can’t give the card to myself, right? xD I also got one very random pen with a random quote, but it has a very small tip, which is very interesting! But I do have to say, I like the cards that we get in the Papergangbox, in general, the least from everything, because you can’t do anything with them, you can’t create something because it has already been created. So getting 3 different cards as an extra to make up for the stress I had recently did not really sit that well with me. Still, I take it and I will find someone I can send the cards to. And since I am currently in contact with them anyway, talking about compensations for different problems, I hope to be satisfied in the end. Because their customers service never let me down up till now 😉
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing Published: 4th of November 2014 Length: 208 Pages Genre: Collection of Poetry and Prose Price: 11,49€ on Amazon
Review Let me tell you the story of how I got to know the work of Rupi Kaur. I am actually not a big fan of poetry, at least not of the stuff we had to read and analyze at school. I guess not everyone liked to unpack a Sonett and its multiple layers of meaning, especially when it’s about something you are not interested in at all. So when a pen pal of mine, actually recommend Kaur’s work to me, in a totally different context and I got to read some of her poems, I was quite surprised that I was enjoying it. The friend suggested using her poems and illustration to get inspired for my own works of art, mostly illustrations too. So the intention was not even to get me into poetry, but maybe it kinda did?
But then, in an effort to find out more about this artist who got me interested in reading poems, I found out that not everyone was enjoying what she wrote, quite the contrary. Many people called her a wanna be-, Instagram- or tumblr poet, they were saying that her work seemed lazy and not quite thoughtful. People were pointing out that some of her work would be considered statements, might have even been Twitter posts, but not art. Which really got me thinking: what is art and who can decide on the definition? (There are famous people in Germany I know of whose whole art persona is based on sharing their own tweets on different platforms, it might not be poetry, so maybe to be the best example, but I would say it could be art, modern art so to speak.) That’s why I really wanted to write this review because I guess if I would not have been reading some of her poems before, hearing and reading all these negative things about Kaur’s might have been the point where I would have stopped researching. I might not even have bought the books I already put in my online shopping card. But glad I didn’t, I gave this artist a chance and I can’t say that I am regretting it.
I am not an expert on this field obviously and I don’t try to discredit the people who gave their very negative opinions on Kaur’s work, but I want to try and give another perspective on the topic. Because I think, what some people might actively or subconsciously have done was gatekeeping and I think in its essence, that was wrong. Comparing Kaur’s work with what I knew from schools, definitely showed some differences. Most of her poems are quite short and as I said, their meaning can be understood easily. The themes of her poetry surround around womanhood, abuse, family and relationships and you can say they feel like very meaningful quotes. The most popular one, which her first book is named after is “Milk and Honey”:
The messages of this poem seems to be: people who have been hurt, try not to hurt others because they don’t want anyone else to feel the pain, they felt. It’s said with a more visual language and emphasizes with a not quite fitting illustration, to which we get in a moment, but you get a general idea. There is no second or third layer behind it, which some people might consider lazy or consciously vague so that more people can relate to it. But what exactly would be the problem with that? Kaurs work in her first book feels very much like a sort of theraphy session for herself and the reader, where you get lead through diffrent stages from “the hurting”, over “the loving”, to “the breaking” and in the end “the healing”. Writing down those maningful quote-like and longer poems, seemed to have helped her deal with certain things that might have happend to her. And it did help me feel understood somewhat too. Since I can’t believe Kaur only did that to become famous, I want to ask again: what exactly would be the problem with that? If she was helping herself and others with her words, is that not the purest form of art?
I said the illustration was not quite fitting, not because I wanted to critique her art style, but because I think a different imagine might have emphasized the message a little bit more. Her Illustration is general, seem to be what people like to complain about the second most though, also calling it lazy. I feel like that’s very subjective like the whole thing might be because I actually really like the art style Kaur used. Just because it’s not shaded or colored, because the ends of the lines don’t connect to each other all the time, it still has something very interesting to it, that I really enjoy. I actually even tried to recreate that, which is not as easy as it might seem. People also like to point out that it feels like the illustrations are only there to fill the pages, make the book seem fuller, they don’t really see it as part of the poem, which I find strange. I see them, the illustrations and the poems, as a connected piece of art. Like in this example:
It’s one of her shorter poems, which again can be understood very easily but with the scorpion she choose to put on that specific page, it might tell a bigger different story. I see it as a nod to the fable of the scorpion and the frog, which goes something like this: A scorpion asks a frog if he can ride on his back to get from one side of the river to the other side. The frog asks “Why should I risk getting stung by you?” to which the scorpion answers “Why should I sting you on the river, if it would mean that we both drown?”. The frog sees the logic in that and decides to help the scorpion, but halfway over the river, the scorpion goes against his word and stings the frog. With his last dying breath, the frog asks the scorpion why he did that and doomed them both, and the scorpion answers “It’s just my nature”. So both the poem and the story play with the idea of people making bad decisions, hurting themselves and others in the process. But Kaur’s poems seem to condemn the actions more, going against the idea of “It’s just my nature” whereas the fable kinda leaves that more open to interpretation. With that in mind, I don’t think Kaur just put random art on the page to fill up her book, she did it because it was part of the art she wanted to create and maybe the message she wanted to sent.
Final Thoughts So, all in all, I would say art is a very subjective thing, so don’t let other people tell you that something you enjoy is bad and always try to make up your own mind. From what I understand, Rupi Kaur’s work might be considered Level 1 poetry: fun to read, easy to understand, and aesthetically pleasing. It might not be comparable to Level 5 or Level 10 poerty, but that does not mean it’s not good or not poetry at all. So this might be a good book to get you started on poems in general, especially if you like the topics mentioned. It might get you interested in this form of art and that’s never wrong.
When you are following my blog for at least a month, you might have seen that I am doing a monthly review of a subscription box called Papergang by OhDeer. It’s a box that gets a new design and content every time and I have had a one-year subscription for a little over half a year now. So I thought I might give you my first thoughts about what I liked and what I did not like so far. Keep in mind there are still 5 boxes coming(while I am writing this review), so they still have time to improve upon some things. But let’s start with the impressing stuff!
Impressing stuff This monthly subscription box was the first one of its kind that I ever got. Even though I really love the concept of it, I think they might not be as popular in Germany, which is why many have never heard of them before. I can’t even remember how I got to know about this box in particular, but I am very glad that I did! I do love stationery and art and this box combines them both and it feels like the people behind it are very passionate about what they do and with whom they work together.
I love that the box is designed in a way, that it fits into a regular mailbox with no problem. Especially since the pandamic hit, I really hate taking on parcels personally, so I love to send them to special package stations in Germany. The only problem is, that these package stations can only be open by the customer and the workers of DHL, the biggest german mail company. Meaning that if I get something from outside the country, which is not shipped with DHL, I can’t let it be delivered to one of those stations. So having it fit into my mailbox is almost as good, if not even better, because I only have to go check my mail, to get it out 😉
I had some troubles with getting the boxes shipped to me in the first place, which might sound like a bad thing, but it’s actually nothing the people over at OhDeer can be blamed for. It often was a customs problem, in the time where the UK was leaving the EU and some parcels just got missing. But the customer service at the Papergangs HQ, has never let me down. They answered emails fairly quickly and always tried to either explain to me what happened and calm me down, or got to work on a solution right away. And as of now, all the missing parcels were replaced without a problem.
Things to improve upon Sadly I have to say that not everything worked out as expected. What got me into wanting a year-long subscription of the Papergang boxes for 2021, were the pictures I saw of the boxes from 2020. Mainly the October and November boxes got me hyped up and very sad about not getting one of them! They were not only beautifully designed but also packed with great stuff, on some pictures I was even surprised to see how many things fit into such a small box. And I know, there should not be quantity over quality, but I feel like both of these things have gone somewhat down.
What I mostly miss in the boxes is a theme, a thought behind why exactly these stationaries were chosen for a particular box. Are they part of a kind of letter set, that I can use to write my penpals? Or are they part of a note-taking set, an office supply set, and so on. Because oftentimes, especially with the last 3 boxes, it felt as if they would have just randomly put together some stationary, put a unique design over it and call it a day. As I said in my reviews, stationery is never too much, I will always find a use for a pen, or a notepad, or something similar. But the boxes just don’t get me as excited anymore, if it just feels like I am getting random supplies. I really hope they can improve upon that with their last 5 boxes of the year because that will really be the tipping point for me to decide if I want to get another subscription of them or not.
This last point might be a bit contradictory to the last point I spoke about in the “impressive things” category because it’s again about shipping and customers service. As I am writing this review, my august box has still not arrived and it’s less than a week till the next month(as of me writing the review, might post it later :P). But I knew that would happen because I got an email saying that some shipping errors arose again and my parcel will only be shipped at the end of august or the beginning o September. Someone took responsibility for it this time and promised some “extra gifts” to compensate for the inconvenience. Now I have not received these gifts, but I really hope they will be there in the first place. Because even though I can understand why the shipping errors happened at the time of the Brexit, it does kinda get annoying when it happens over and over again. And before this email, I got nothing to compensate for it. So I guess if they really will be following up on this email, it will an improvement, if not, I know what to talk about in my full years’ review of the boxes 😉
Final Thoughts The Papergang got me into subscriptions in general, which I am super happy about and grateful for. But I have to say at this point, I am already thinking about if it would make sense to keep up my subscription or to use my money on another one next year. Just because the excitement I got in the beginning, did not really last until now. And like I said, I think that’s because of the “randomness” that I get with many of the boxes. When the next 5 will be better, I will change my mind and I would gladly do so. Because I still really love the idea behind the boxes, not only just repackaging some products and shipping them, but designing them, working with artists, making it a very unique experience. That’s what I bought my subscription for, that’s what I loved seeing the old boxes. So please Papergang, fill me with this excitement again!
This month’s box arrived over 10 days before the end of the month and I think that’s how it will be all the time from now on since they changed the carrier recently! I am very happy about that and I am looking forward to my Papergang boxes even more from now on 😉 So let’s take a look into this months box together now 😛
This months box was designed by Clara LeRoy and it contained an A6 notebook with 128 pages of checkered paper, 2 embroidered patches with the texts “keep going” and “be nice” in different colors, 2 sections of sticky notes with different designs, and 30 sheets each, a special embroidery scissors and a multicolored marble pencil in a craft paper sleeve which writes in a mixture of blue, red and purple.
I don’t have much to say about this month’s box, to be real honest. It’s just not my kind of box, there is no real theme to be seen here, I don’t like checkered pages in notebooks and what would I need embroidery scissors for in a stationery box? I appreciate the patches, I guess I can always find a place for stuff like that, but I think there will be other people, who were expecting more pens and paper and who don’t really care about patched at all, let alone doing embroidery themselves, which they could need scissors for. The designs are okay(again just not m style, but not bad at all!), I especially like the sticky note with the circle on it, kinda like highlighting the notes you will take on it. But that does not really save the box for me. Hopefully, next months theme will be more my thing 😉 I would be so ready for another lettering box theme, with lettering paper, and maybe some stuff to put onto the paper or on envelopes. Maybe some post stamp-like stickers would be a great idea!
If everything goes according to plan, you have already read my review on this quarters Artfulbox with the theme: Watercolor. If you have not, but want to, just click on the unterlined text to get there 😉 If you are new to this: Artful is a quarterly subscription box from the UK, made by OhDeer the same people that came up with the Paperganboxes! Due to some Brexit issues most of my subcription boxes from April-Mai got lost in the mail, so did this one, which is why I am reviewing it only now. Gladly I got a replacement for all of my boxes and I was especially looking forward to this one, because I already have some experience on the fiel of Calligraphy and Handlettering. Though I have to say that the box itself does not really match it’s contents, I think Calligraphy has nothing to do with the ocean and fish, so I was a bit confused at first. The Artwork is great of course, but I would not have choosen it for this theme. But enough talk about the outside, let’s take a look inside!
The box was made together with the company Tombow from Japan, which is a well established brand in the community of letter art and it’s actually diffrent from the newest Box where they made their very own supplies. Just something I have noticed, maybe getting what is needed for a good watercolor set was easier than making theirown brushpens or it was a matter of money and they just had more to put into the watercolors box 😉 In this box we get 8 Tombow Dual Brushpens in a very limited color scheme(we don’t get a yellow for example), 5 Tombow Twin-Tone Dual Tipmarkers, a Tombow MONO Ereaser and a HB graphite lead pencil, aswell as an A4 Bristol 250gsm drawing pad and 4 blank greeting cards plus envelopes. Let’s talk about the 112 page magazine! Structuerwise it does not make a lot of sense to me… The table of contents begins on page 10 after a “the brief history of typography” and an editors note, after which the first thing we see is a making off of the boxart itself. A making off is always intresting to me, but not when I waited to get into the process of creating art, after waiting so long to get my box. Then comes the first interview and a tutorial which has nothing to do with Calligraphy or Hand Lettering at all. On page 30 we get the first glimpse of what creating letter art could look like with the first tutorial of blending colors together. But that also is a bit nonsensical because we get to know about the basics of how to use the brushpens and how to create letter art on page 50 and 66! Please tell me what was the thought behind that…? I guess you could argue that the box was not meant for beginners, but if that’s true we would not have needed the basic tutorials at all and could have used the space for some more interviews and advanced tutorials. Maybe they wanted to show first, what different kinds of letter arts could look like, but I don’t think they made the right call here and for a beginner that might even be a bit overwhelming. I know they already got better in the next box, so I don’t want to complain about it too much, since they seems to have noticed their errors, but I still wanted to mention it.
As I said in the beginning I have some experience when it comes to this topic, which is why I was confused again. When I think of Calligraphy I think of quill pens with metal nips tipped in ink, sliding across the paper. But I have to say, that’s western-style Calligraphy over in some Asian countries Calligraphy was always done with brushes. Calligraphy itself might be a kind of umbrella term, describing the art or lettering. So I would say they did nothing wrong with the title, but I would have loved to maybe let it be more specific. Because what we got in the box, were supplies for what I and many others call Hand Lettering. The difference for me really lies in the supplies you are working with and the different techniques you can use because of it. You can’t do the same strokes with a brush of course, that you can do with a metal nib and vice versa. I can’t really speak for Asian Countries and if their traditional style of Calligraphy is different from that, like maybe what I think is traditional western Calligraphy is, is using metal nibs and old fonds, recreating the traditional feel of it. Maybe traditional Asian Calligraphy is using special brushes, with only black ink, which might be why they too would say the supplies given are more for a modern type of Calligraphy. For me both of these types of letter art are cool, so I am okay with getting some great Tombow supplies, but I think some people might expect something different and get disappointed because of it, so maybe boxes like this could use a longer title like “Modern Calligraphy” or “Calligraphy: Hand Lettering”. And I would also love if maybe traditional wester and Asian Calligraphy could maybe be a future boxes topic 😉 The tutorials themselves are interesting, I will separate them into tutorials for beginners, advanced techniques, and tutorials that are not tied to the topic. The tutorials for beginners are very good, you can’t really go wrong with that, to be honest. But I would have loved to maybe get a separate sheet to practice on(there is one in the magazine, but maybe a separate one would have been better, since who likes to write in books, right?), since I to this day struggle with what the right amount of pressure to put on the brush to get he result I am imgaining. I think especially for beginners that can’t be hard and a sheet like that can always be very helpful. The more advance tutroials would be the ones talking about blending and using the special twin-tone markers, since that’s not something a beginner need to learn ASAP. You can go a long way just with the basics and being creative 😉 Since I have never worked with the twin-tonw markers before, I am looking forward to creating something with the help of the tutorials. The last typ of tutorials kinda used the brushpens in diffrent way to create drawings. Of course, you can use your brushpens for drawing, but including these tutorials felt like as if the people behind the box though using the markers only for lettering purposes did not do them enough justice. The lettering is not “real art” or something like that. I really did not get the need behind including them if I am honest. We could have used some more inspiration or maybe diffrent alphabeth and fonds to copy better, especially for beginners, but I am also up for learning new alphabeths even though I am lettering for some time now.
With my last box, I tried to make a greeting card for someone’s birthday and since many people’s birthdays are coming up, I made another one with this box too! For this one, I used the twin-tone markers and the faux calligraphy technique. I have to say I really like the bright colors(which we have not gotten with the big Tombow markers) but I might have used them wrong… when going over a certain spot multiple times, the paper flacked very fast, which was quite surprising to me, since it was specially chosen for this box. But I have to say, it might be a user error, still something I wanted to mention. The tutorial on how to use them did not help me much since actually the person in the “tutorial” also used them for the first time xD And the “tutorial” was more about using the thin tip for outlining and the bigger one for coloring in the lettering art. So I have to say it was not very helpful :/ The other tutorial about putting a shadow behind the letter, was as helpful to be honest. It basically goes like this: 1. Write a word(not showing hot to do that with the brush pen the best way) 2. Put shadow behind it in different colors. 3. Done I have to say I am a bit disappointed since that’s kinda what I could come up with myself, a tutorial would really take its time to guide me through the process step by step more, especially when I either have problems using the brush pens or have never used them before. I felt kinda let down. But I am still kinda happy with the card I have made, maybe I can put some more details in later, but I really like the colors, I have to say I rarely work with them, so it was nice to do that for a change.
“Alles Gute zum Geburtstag” is the long version of german people saying “Happy BIrthday” 😛
All in all, I have to say that I was pretty disappointed in the box. The supplies we got were high quality, but I can’t really understand why we got those limited colors for example(still kinda mad about not getting a yellow), why there was no blending pen or a sheet of a practice alphabet. It just kinda feels a bit random to me. As random as the order of the chapters in the magazines, to be honest xD The whole box did not feel very thought through or maybe put together by someone, who does not enjoy Calligraphy very much. Maybe that’s why I am so disappointed in it, because Calligraphy is something I always liked to do, which is why I was looking forward to it so much! But I have to say again, this box came out before the watercolor one and it feels like they found and fixed many of the mistakes they made in this box like for example having a more structured magazine and less random supplies! So I will keep an eye on future boxes and their themes and I will definitely try another one sometime in the future 🙂 So you too should maybe not only judge them on this particular box and keep an eye on them, if you are interested in the general idea of these boxes! Now that I think about it, I am quite happy that I accidentally bought the watercolor box too, so that I was able to review both of them and see how the company has improved^^
This will be the second post this week, just because it should have technically already been up two months ago xD As you might have already read, there was a problem with Brexit regulation in April and May which leads to many packages getting lost. This box was amongst them, but I am glad it got replaced and I am able to review it now! Hopefully, this will be the last you hear about the Brexit stuff, since all of the stuff that got lost, is accounted for now xD But maybe there will be some post talking about stuff I got, I apologize in advance 😛
It’s kinda funny to me how the Junes box was a bit to dull to me colorwise or better to put it: it was not rainbow enough for pride month xD The mays box is! This is just so funny to me because technically they just would have to switch out the box designs and to me, it would have made so much more sense xD But in general, I have to say this months theme is one of the prettiest ones I have seen so far 🙂 As for the contents we have a 256 pages linen daily planner with the beautiful color gradient, an A5 print designed by Steffi Lynn(as everything in the box is :P), a set of point sticker markers with 5 different designs, a large vinyl sticker, two pencils with holographic foil and a small bag filled with 40 multicolored paperclips (60 advertised in the booklet but maybe not delivered?).
When you follow me for a while and have read my other reviews on the previous Papergang boxes you know I love to look for a DIY aspect or a theme in the contents we are getting. This box weirdly does not feel as it has a theme at all, it more feels like a refill box: Is your planner from January already full? Here you get a new one! Have you lost your paperclips again? There you go! All of your pencils are broken again? We have some extra shiny ones for you and some point markers for good measure! 😉 And don’t get me wrong, refills are a good thing, especially if you frequently use all of your stationery, so I appreciate getting refills kinda automatically with every new box. But one box just with refills feels a bit lame. Maybe that’s just my point of view and others get to enjoy the box more, but I would have loved there to be a theme or DIY aspect to follow.
For me, the Mays box was a bit underwhelming, which might be due to the circumstances of already having received multiple boxes and comparing them to each other. I think the Januarys box actually did not look much different from what we got and I got to appreciate it more. And like I mentioned in June I might have celebrated the colorfulness of it more… Sounds kinda strange if I put it like that, but that’s just my opinion 😉 And I have to view the Papergang boxes as a subscription because I do think some people might get a single one if they really like the content, but in general, most people will get it as a subscription. And I think it’s completely normal to then view it that way and compare the different boxes with each other. I am looking forward to the next boxes still since I love the Papergang stuff in general, I just hope to be more blown away next time!
I am back with another mystery/ subscription box review, this time it’s all about the Artful box, which is done by the same people who do the Papergang boxes too, so I had to test it out eventually 😉 The concept of both boxes is pretty similar, only that in the Artful box instead of stationery you get art supplies for a certain project and you don’t get it every month but one box every quarter of the year. I did not have the money for it in the first quarter of 2021, so I had now reordered the box and got it shipped in May. Sadly same way with my Papergang boxes, there was a shipping/ delivery problem that led to the box that was shipped in May being lost. I did get sent a replacement box of course, but in the whole chaos, I kinda overlooked that instead of just buying one box, I actually made a subscription, so I got sent the next box already too. But to be honest, I am not mad about it, since it also sounds very interesting. Let’s have a look at it together! So many things can be considered art, so there are many possibilities of what could be inside an Artful box. The people behind it thought it would be the best idea to highlight a certain type of art with every box, focus solely on that, and give the best supplies needed to start a project. This Mai box’s theme was Hand Lettering, which I actually did some years ago, so it was a great box for me to restart an old Hobby! The next box I got has watercolors as its theme and since the watercolor box actually arrived first, I will also review it first 😉
The box came with a set of 24 watercolor half pans, a 29.5ml masking fluid bottle, special watercolor paper, 4 blank greeting cards, 5 different brushes, a pencil such as a pipette, and a 100 pages magazine with tips and tricks. The book was actually what I was interested the most in since the last time I painted with watercolors was in primary school and I absolutely hated it. I really hoped to get new motivation and learn new techniques which helped me use this type of art in a different way. The artwork on the book and within is very pretty, they even show how to draw one of my favorite animals a red panda! They start with some pages of general information about watercolors, assuming that you don’t know anything about it, which was great for me! But this information only uses up about 10 pages in the book, so if you already know how to work with it, you could start right away and still have enough input and ideas for your new projects 😉 So only judging from the book, I would say the box is both beginner-friendly, but also useful and interesting for people who search for art prompts, step-by-step guides, or interviews with artists who work with that particular craft.
Like I mentioned, working with watercolors always felt like a chore to me, since it was the go-to color technique in almost all of my art classes and I still never seemed to fully master it. I also don’t think we were really introduced to how to work with them properly. For example, I never heard of a masking fluid before, even though it does sound like a cool way of creating certain patterns and would have been surely helpful! As I am writing this part of the review, I still have not used the art supplies yet, but I wanted to let you know what I am planning on doing and later I can tell you if it has worked out of not 😉 I am actually a bit scared to try the very professional-looking animal drawings in the magazine and wanted to try something more abstract first. Since I also like to design greetings cards for my friends and family and there were some birthdays recently, I wanted to play around for a bit with the blank cards and use the watercolors to create an interesting background. Sadly there seems to be no real chapter on how to do that, only on some blending ideas in general. So I guess I will have to look for some other tutorials on the Internet. Maybe a small negative point: I would have loved to not only see realistic drawings, but some guides create abstract art too.
When starting to use the appliance from the box, I opted for watching videos on youtube in the end instead of using the magazine itself. I just learn better with visual input and the guides in the books were a bit too advanced for me. I watched a video by Shayda Campbell and tried to recreate a flower greeting card she made, testing out different colors and trying to blend them together. One of the things I learned right away is that the colors are way more potent than anything I have used before! When using watercolors at school, we would mix them in the pan with the pigment itself and put it on paper, repeating the process over and over when the brush was dry again. With these watercolors, I take a bit of it on my brush, use the pipette to get some water on the mixing palate, and mix the puddle with my brush. Then I use this puddle for my illustrations and I only use the color again, when I am mixing a new one. It might sound kinda dumb to you, if you have worked with good watercolors before, of course, that’s how you would use it, right? But I have never done that, so it was all new to me xD What I realized because of it is that the half pans you get, which might seem very small at first, last longer than expected^^ The brushes felt like very good quality, but when working with watercolors, the liquid has a mind of its own. So even though they did not shed, but glide over the paper, the water often finds its own way xD If you will be more trained to use it, things like that won’t happen that often I guess, but for a beginner like me, it was not avoidable. The paper was really great to work with too! I did use a lot of water on it, because I wanted to try out different techniques and it never leaked or ripped, it only warped a bit, nothing some heavy books couldn’t fix. I did not get to test out the masking fluid, since it felt a bit too advanced for me yet, but I still appreciate having it in there for future use, when I got better 😉
It’s was a birthday card, “Alles Gute” means “Good Wishes” in German^^
I would say I was pleasantly surprised by the box! The contents were very high quality, though all of them are produced especially for the box, which some people seem to be mad about(they even talk about it in the magazine). The way I understood it, there are certain brands being associate with “good art” and if you use any other brand, your art might not turn out as good, in some people’s opinion. I can’t really speak for them, since I have not used many different art brands when it comes to watercolor, but I would say it’s always good to try out new things 😉 And what I can say is, that the contents: brushes, colors, and paper were lightyears better than everything I have worked with so far and I can highly recommend it^^ The magazine itself is pretty interesting, especially the interviews, the guides are a bit to advances for a beginner. Of course, you could say that this box is just not made for beginners, but I do think it’s made to suit everyone. They are releasing a new box every quarter and it’s all about learning new things, so maybe there should be more projects for people beginning the craft. So I am looking forward to using my next box!
As you have read in my last Papergang Post there were some problems recently. From what the lovely people from the helping team could tell me, OhDeer had a general delivery problem with their parcels getting to Germany, something with the carrier so they switched it. But it seems like all of my recent packages have been lost because of it: my Aprils and Mays Papergangboxes but also the artful boxes I wanted to get and review. Since I got a replacement sent for all of these, I am not as mad and just waiting patiently for them 🙂 But that’s why after the review of April’s box, you now get to see Junes 😉 Let’s take a look inside!
I have to say since it’s my first time getting a Papergang box in June and I kinda heard about them doing something more pride-themed last year, I was expecting something more… pride-themed xD I would have even liked it if it would have been more subtle, maybe less rainbow more other flags, or something like that but the June 2021 box, has nothing to do with pride at all. I guess it’s not too bad, but I was a bit disappointed. Moving on to the actual contents of the box we have an A5 Notepad with 85 sheets printed in a flowery, jungly-vibe design the whole box is themed after, 4 blank greeting cards to design yourselves that come with 4 differently printed envelopes, 3 rubber stamps with a big leaf, a bird and “happy birthday” as their motive, including a blue ink pad, 3 gel pens in the colors green, blue and pink and 4 sheets with washi stickers on them 😛
I love the DIY vibes this box has since I like designing greeting cards myself 🙂 Basically, you can make a card only using the stamps, but you can also be inspired by the other artworks in this box and maybe draw some birds or special leaves yourself. I would have liked it better if they would have included a marker or something since the gel pens they did include seem like they would be better used for writing or maybe outlining. But I like that we don’t only have the stamps and stickers to use for making our own cards 😉 And I really like the already made envelopes, since envelopes are harder to draw on and individualize. I am looking forward to using them^^ I guess you could also use the notepad sheets to write a letter on to include with the card or just take notes in Home Office 😉
I would have loved to switch out the notepad with maybe some washitape to be used to customise the greetingcards even more or something similar. I guess I can’t really get over the fact that there is not a single pride item in here …So I can’t really hide my dissapointment xD But all in all it was a pretty avarage box, not much to critisie, but also not too much cool stuff to get exited about, at least in my opinion. But maybe you would have fun with it^^
You all might be wondering where the post for the Aprils Papergang box went or why it was missing: The reason actually was that my Papergang box for April got lost in the mail :/ But the nice people over at OhDeer helped me out and send me a replacement box which arrived today(the 02.06.2021)! So now we can take a look into what we got together 😉 Enjoy!
This month was a bit special since 4 different designed boxes were sent out. I got the one with the orange dots, if you want to see some of the other designs check out Papergangs Instagram Channel^^ But even though the outside of the boxes was different, the contents were the same for everyone! We got 16 letters with the 4 different designs the boxes were designed in too, 32 letter sheets in different colors a small stencil made out of metal with some geometric shapes, a 60 sheet sticky notepad(also with the 4 different designs on it), 2 transparent penicils filled with rainbow gel ink and last but not least a washi tape 🙂
I have to say when I saw the designs of the boxes on Instagram I was not very hyped, since they looked very geometrical and I just thought April’s box will not be for me. Geometrical is not my style which is why the washi tape and the stencil impressed me the least, even though I like that the stencil is made out of metal! All the stencils I own are made out of cheap plastic, unfortunately, so I guess they have at least somewhat impressed me with that 😉 There is always a use for sticky notes, no matter the design or size, so I won’t complain about them at all xD The idea behind the rainbow ink in the gel pens is cool too since you will first write in purple, then pink, blue, green, orange, and yellow until the pen is drained. But what I would have liked better(and I have no idea if that is even possible to do with gel pens) is writing in rainbow colors the whole time. Do you know these pencils which look like a colorblind test at the tip? They change colors way quicker and back again and I love the effect that creates! And I kinda expected that when I saw this pen, but of course it works a bit differently 😛 Still, a cool idea to not only have a one colored pen^^
I do really like the envelopes, especially the blue one which says “Oh hi”, I don’t know why it just made me smile 🙂 The only problem I have with those in the size. I already own a letter set from Papergang(from the November box 2020) so I have already used them and they are quite strange. I measured them just for you and they are 8x16cm, for comparison a normal envelope would be 12,5×23,5cm 😉 Of course, the letter sheets are a perfect match for those small-sized envelopes, so there is no problem there, but you can’t write as much, without using many sheets. Maybe that’s just a problem for people who like to write long letters like me, for others they might just be cute 😉 The letter sheets themselves fit better into this month than they would have in April since they are bright-colored in almost rainbow-like order 😛 But we only have yellow, blue, pink and orange, which still look very intense and very great. I think I never owned such colorful lettering paper and I will definitely use it soon!
So, all in all, I can say this box pleasantly surprised me with its colorful theme and I am glad that I have got a replacement. The may’s box also has not arrived yet, but I hope it will come soon 😉 If it’s there I’ll let you all know!
