Spotlight Stationery

          I find it extremely funny that everytime I get a Spotlight Stationery box I say, “this is my favorite box yet”. Every month the box either has unique stuff that I have never seen before or something really beautiful that fills me with joy...this box is no different. The theme of the box is RETRO and there are some awesome things to look at so let us go! Errr, one more thing. If you purchase the stationery box from Spotlight Stationery the price includes a donation to Gloucestershire Young Carers  This is an charity that provides a range of services to young carers and their families. So not only are you getting awesome stuff but you are helping other people too. And now for the box. 

          One of the things I love about these boxes is they always have a personalize envelope and inside are beautiful cards by different artists. 

Here is the information for each card.

I think my favorite is the one by Adam Forster.

          I’ve been meaning to tryout some Rodia paper because I’ve heard a lot about it and here is my opportunity to do so. This notebook is an A5 with 64 pages/ 32 sheets of Clairefontaine 90gsm paper, lined. Made in France. 

          How do you make Maya happy? Why send her pretty pens of course. These are a set of Kikkerland Metal Retro ballpoint pens, 1 mm, medium point, and writes in black ink. They are from the Netherlands.

          I really thought this was going to be one of those address books because it had Telephone Directory on it but it only had graph paper inside. However, I fell in love with the tiny little notebook with lined pages. They are by Cavallini and come from the USA. 

           Finally, there is a beautiful greeting card and stickers from Colcards. They specialize in arts, crafts, and retro advertising images and they are based in the UK. 

          I couldn’t be more happy with this box if I tried but then Spotlight Stationery rarely (if ever) have disappointed me.

Papergang Box No. 18

          Box no. 18 from Papergang is really pretty and useful. The designer for this box is Gemma Correll. The box has 5 items and the main color is red. 

          From the moment I unwrapped the package I was very excited about the items in the box. They were things that I use a lot for my work and my research. The first thing that I looked at was a pack of three pens.  Not just any pens but really cute ones LOL.

          Of course you can’t have pens without having something to use them with so there was post-it notes and an A-5 notepad. Also very cute...and red!

          There was also a set of stickers, which I am totally in love with! It has bunnies and cats and books...just a few of my favorite things.

Finally, there is a beautiful Greeting Card.

I think this is my favorite of all the Papergang boxes I’ve gotten.

Two boxes

          So today I have two boxes to review. The first is the Planner Society box and the second is a new subscription that I am trying out. Of course, as with any subscription box that I get, Kuwaiti customs must take a looksee. So let us start with the Planner Society. 

          So this is a subscription that is all about crafting for your planner and as with every box they sent so far the designs used are very inspiring...but mostly I use their supplies for my mixed media compositions rather than my planner. 

          As you can see from the pictures shown there are a couple of washi tapes, some puffy stickers and some normal ones, some beautiful cardstock paper, some die cuts, dividers, journaling cards, planner paperclips, a small memo pad and a pen. All of the stuff in the box is going into my stash box which is running low on a lot of things. 

          Now I'm going to talk about the Pocket Notbooks box. It has a theme of "Probably..." and a donation of 1 pound is made to the Literacy Trust for every box sold. The box itself is pretty simple. It has two packs of three small notebooks. The first pack is called Playtype Backpocket Notebook. The notebooks are 90 x 130 mm and have 48 pages each. They come from Copenhagen.

          The second pack of notebooks are the same size but they come from the USA and are called Public Supply and they also have 48 pages each but the pages are ruled.

          There were also some extra goodies in the box. Two dog shaped paperclips one small magnet and a sticker. 

I'm going to enjoy putting these small notebooks to work!

Owlcrate August 2017

          The theme for the August Owlcrate box is Something Wicked This Way Comes. The box had a lot of fun things in it as well as two books, which was awesome!

          After removing the white worms from the top of the box, the first think that I saw was socks. They are Edgar Allen Poe socks from Out of Print and they are comfy!

          The next thing to come out of the box was a bag of coffee. It was made exclusively by Happenstance Coffee, I've already had a cup and it is yummy! It is inspired by Harry Potter.

          The box also included a sticker designed by Evie Bookish and inspired by the Monsters of Verity duology by Victoria Shwab, a fountain pen from Ooly ,which writes in black and a bookmark designed exclusively by Treehouse of Books.

          Finally, the two books in the box. The first books is Sleepy Hollow & Other Stories by Washington Irving published by Rock Paper Books. I just love the cover of this edition!

          The second book in the box has a cover that is exclusive to Owlcrate. It comes with a bookplate signed by the author, a pin, and a letter from the author to Owlcrate subscribers. The book is called The Hearts We Sold and it is by Emily Lloyd-Jones. 

          As usual there is a great amount of work that has gone into the boxes at Owlcrate and everything included is always the best.

The Nocturnal Reader's Box August 2017

          I think this might be my favorite of the Nocturnal Reader's boxes I got so far, you'll see why in a minute. The box has the theme: Monster Mayhem! As usual the Kuwaiti customs had to take their customary look inside the box, hope they were suitably creeped out 😆

          So the first thing I decided to pull out of the box was the hat of course, and hidden behind the hat were two other things that I also loved, but first the hat. It is an exclusive hat inspired by Stephen King's The Strand. My husband called dibs on it and has been wearing it since it came out of the box.

          Behind this pretty hat was a snuggly wrapped package which contained a mug (my most favorite thing to own besides books) and a bath bomb. The mug is an exclusive designed and created by Jeff at exhumedvisions.com and it features The Exorcist. The bath bomb is also an exclusive from Alice at Fizzy Fairy Apothecary entitled "Infected/Infested" and supposedly has a surprise in the middle...I gave it to my cousin, didn't tell her about the surprise in the middle *Evil Laugh*

          The last four things to come out of the box before I go to the books are an amazingly creepy print by Ally Burke called "The Woman Who Never Killed Bugs" and you can find Ally at deadspiderhands.net, a glow in the dark pin inspired by Patient Zero made by Joe Ledger, a post card and a creepy bookmark.

          Now let us talk about the books in this box. There are three pretties! Two of the books are new releases and one is a previous release.

Book One (New Release):

Title: The Grip Of It

Author: Jac Jemc

ISBN Number: 9780374536916

Pages: 272

Published: August 1, 2017

Publisher: FSG Originals

Synopsis (from GoodReads): 

A chilling literary horror novel about a young couple who purchase and live in a haunted house. Jac Jemc’s The Grip of It tells the eerie story of a young couple haunted by their new home. Julie and James settle into a house in a small town outside the city where they met. The move—prompted by James’s penchant for gambling, his inability to keep his impulses in check—is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to leave behind their usual haunts and start afresh. But this house, which sits between ocean and forest, has plans for the unsuspecting couple. 

As Julie and James try to settle into their home and their relationship, the house and its surrounding terrain become the locus of increasingly strange happenings. The architecture—claustrophobic, riddled with hidden rooms within rooms—becomes unrecognizable, decaying before their eyes. Stains are animated on the wall—contracting, expanding—and map themselves onto Julie’s body in the form of bruises; mold spores taint the water that James pours from the sink. Together the couple embark on a panicked search for the source of their mutual torment, a journey that mires them in the history of their peculiar neighbors and the mysterious residents who lived in the house before Julia and James. 

Written in creepy, potent prose, The Grip of It is an enthralling, psychologically intense novel that deals in questions of home: how we make it and how it in turn makes us, mapping itself onto bodies and the relationships we cherish.

Book Two (New Release): 

Title: Mapping the Interior

Author: Stephen Graham Jones

ISBN Number 9780765395108

Pages: 112

Published: June 20, 2017

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Synopsis (from GoodReads): 

Mapping the Interior is a horrifying, inward-looking novella from Stephen Graham Jones that Paul Tremblay calls "emotionally raw, disturbing, creepy, and brilliant." 

Walking through his own house at night, a fifteen-year-old thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. Instead of the people who could be there, his mother or his brother, the figure reminds him of his long-gone father, who died mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he knew.

The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his little brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at terrible cost.

Book Three (Previous Release):

Title: This Book is Full of Spiders

Author: David Wong

ISBN Number: 9781250036650

Pages: 450

Published: October 8th 2013

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Synopsis (from GoodReads): 

As the sequel to John Dies At The End, we find our heroes, David and John, again embroiled in a series of horrifying yet mind-bogglingly ridiculous events caused primarily by their own gross incompetence. The guys find that books and movies about zombies may have triggered a zombie apocalypse, despite a complete lack of zombies in the world. As they race against the clock to protect humanity from its own paranoia, they must ask themselves, who are the real monsters? Actually, that would be the shape-shifting horrors secretly taking over the world behind the scenes that, in the end, make John and Dave kind of wish it had been zombies after all. Hilarious, terrifying, engaging and wrenching, This Book Is Full Of Spiders takes us for a wild ride with two slackers from the Midwest who really have better things to do with their time than prevent the apocalypse.

**So I was a little bummed that this is a sequel. I hate getting the second book in a series BUT I checked on Goodreads and apparently when they refer to events from the first book it is usually explain. So you can read this book without reading the first one. YAY!

And that is all she wrote. Amazing haul from this box in terms of books and other useful stuff!