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!
This month’s box arrived at my door on the 26th of February, right before the month ended! For those who don’t know Papergang is a subscription service from the UK, that delivers boxes with exclusive monthly stationery to your home. It’s my second box, and I will review it for you today, enjoy 🙂
The artist for this month was Maddy Gale, who is a gardener and photographer, which can be seen very well in this month’s theme. I really loved the colors of everything, the many different shades of purple really speak to me^^ It’s a different kind of art, seeing that almost all of the old Papergan Box have something drawn onto them, but it’s cool to see a photographer designing a box too! I look forward to what kinds of artists will be designing the next boxes, maybe some letterers or graffiti artists? So many cool possibilities, but let’s focus on this month’s box and take a look inside.
Having reviewed the last few boxes, I see a theme of the contents getting fewer but the quality getting higher with every box. This month’s box had a hefty metal ruler(20cm), a stainless steel scissor, and a ballpoint pen with some metal features. It also contains a big note block and the photo from the cover printed out on sustainably sourced paper. And as always a little origami sheet plus a little booklet with an interview with Maddy and instructions on how to wrap a book with the paper they provided into a beautiful gift.
I have to say this box is a little underwhelming for me and I don’t really see a coherent theme in it. Everything is beautifully colored, I love the purples mixed with the gold metal shine. But I randomly get some office supplies and nothing to do with it. The last box was all about organizing, you got a big notebook, pencils to write in, a sharpener for the pencil and some sticky notes for important information. You could use it as a package and I really appreciated that. This time I got a scissor, which is awesome in general and not what I had thought of when subscribing to the Papergang, but instead of getting wrapping paper, I would have liked maybe some stencils to cut out or an inspiring idea to use the pen with the ruler and then cut it out.
As I said in the beginning it feels like the people behind Papergang are going for quality over quantity, which is not a bad thing in general! I love the weight of the ruler and scissors are very comfortable to hold and sharp enough to cut through cardboard. The pen, which has a black ink cartridge in it, writes well too and the note block has 85 pages, with about 30 lines each, so it will get you a long way! I guess I am just still a bit spoiled from the contents in the octorbow 2020 box, which I got in my haul and maybe they are just changing the formula a bit and there is nothing wrong with that^^
This box was filled with many high-quality stationery items, which I will be definitely using in the future. I think I never owned scissors that cute xD The colors really appealed to me, but I felt like there was a theme missing or the one present just did not really catch me as much as the other boxes did. But that’s always the risk with mystery like subscription boxes like this, it can be a hit and miss sometimes and maybe this time it was a miss, but next time might be a hit again 😉
For all of you who don’t know what Papergang is, it’s a monthly subscription service that ships from the UK by OhDeer. They work together with a different artist every month to create exclusive stationery items like pens, notebooks, greetings cards, and so on. Because it’s shipping from the UK and I live in Germany, with COVID-19 and the Brexit going on, the box took a while to get to me. But I don’t think it’s the company’s fault, it’s just something to keep in mind when you want to begin a subscription too, while not living in the UK yourself. The Januarys box took about a month to get to me and that’s what it looks like:
It was hard not to get spoilered for the contents because I follow the Papergang on Instagram and when the first boxes arrive at the customers’ houses they will most likely repost their stories. So it was not so much of a mystery box this month for me, but I will try to keep it a mystery as much as I can for February. This time they collaborated with the artist Lenja Lorkowski to make five different items: 3 pencils with quotes on them in foil paper, a golden sharpener, a block of sticky notes in the form of a sliced apple, a planner, and a print. They also include a little info sheet every time, about what’s inside and who designed it. This time on the back of the sheet there was a big picture with the illustrations used on the planner, to color in^^ Also a sheet and a QR-Code for Origami 🙂
I was mostly looking forward to the box because of the planner, which hopefully helps me to get a bit more organized this year xD I really like how it’s designed on the inside with a for a to-do list, a timetable, notes and you even have some space for doodling 😉 The pencils feel like good quality, but also rather normal pencils which were probably put into the package so that you could start writing in your planer ASAP. I don’t really get why they would give me a pencil for that, I never write with them because they smudge so much. I would have liked some kind of pen better, but all in all, there is nothing wrong with the pencils and I appreciate the sharpener because I always lose though for some reason o_O
The print was something that really divided the community, at least that’s what I gathered from the Instagram posts about it xD The problem is, that most people were expecting more stationary items in their box and can’t really use the print for anything. They would have liked a pen better or even a small notebook, something to really use not to only hang on their walls. But I also read about some people repurposing the print as some kind of big postcard, writing something on the back and gifting it to friends. I don’t really mind the print so much and really like the idea of writing something on it, but if I could choose between having another print in the next box or having more stationery in it, I would choose the stationery. But I guess that’s a personal preference, if it would have been a print with say galaxy stuff on it, I would love it and certainly hung it somewhere, which is what some people actually did with it 😉
My final verdict on my first ever Papergang box is maybe a bit compromised by me already knowing what was inside xD But aside from that fact, I really appreciate that they put everything into the box so that you could use it right away. There were pencils to write in the planner and even a sharpener for them. I really love the exclusiveness of the items, knowing that an artist sat down to create them. It’s just a different feeling compared to other mystery boxes, which use stuff everyone else could get to. I really appreciate the effort that has gone into it and even if the theme was not 100% for me, I am really looking forward to the next boxes, hoping to really get surprised by the contents this time xD
