Spotlight Stationery

          I'm always excited when it is time to open one of the Spotlight Stationery boxes. I know I'm going to get some interesting stationery of good quality and some really beautiful postcards.  Another thing that I love about the Spotlight Stationery box is that the purchase price of the box includes a donation to Gloucestershire young Carers, which is a charity that provides a range of services for young carers and their families. Check them out at www.glosyoungcarers.org.uk. 

          Now let us get into the box. The theme for the box is "Space, the final frontier". I also love the tag line: "It's stationery, Jim, but not as we know it." My geeky heart was happy. The box includes all my favorite things: notebooks, pens, pencils, and washi tape.

   

          I'm going to start with the beautiful postcards. The lighthouse postcard is by Tilly Gibbs, the mommy wolf and pups is by Naomi Worrell, and the humming birds and Jokers are by Bex Challoner.

          Next up are the pretty, pretty notebooks: DarkStar Collection. They are a pack of 3 pocket notebooks, 1 with plain paper and 2 with dotted paper. They have black covers and creamy colored paper and they are made in the UK.

          I think I am in love with the Cavallini & Co. tin pencil set. The tin has 10 pencils and a pencil sharpener. The pencils are wrapped in vintage images from the Cavallini archives in the USA.

          I've heard a lot about the pen included in this box. It is a Spacetec 0 Gravity pen, and it has a pressurized ballpoint refill. This means you can write upside down, in extreme temperatures, under water, and in 0 gravity and it will always work. The shell of the pen will also accept "Parker-style" G2 refills. This is from a German company.

          Finally, the cute washi tape. It is from Rico Designs in Germany. It is Paper Poetry washi tape gold stars on a pale blue background.

As usual, I'm giving this box a full score!

Spotlight Stationery

          The theme of the box for Spotlight Stationery is Parallel Lines, a collection of lined and striped stationery. This box had some good quality stuff as usual, so let us get into it.

It looks like it was the London branch of Aramex that took a look inside my box this time. Oh well, no box is left unmolested either here or over there lol.

One of the things that I love about this box is that they do tend to personalize some items in the box, usually the envelope that holds the post cards. This time was not exception.  Now let me talk about the post cards. There are four of them as you can see, each one is by a different artist.

1. The girl is by Bimala Gurung and you can find them on bits-gurg@hotmail.com, bim-bims.tumblr.com, and cargo collective.com/bimalagurung-illustration.

2. Hibernation by Katie Turner at bechance.net/katielouillustration, society6.com/katielouillustrations, and Facebook.com/katielouillustrations

3. Buildings by Victoria Ball at Facebook.com/victoriaroseball, easy.com/uk/shop/victoriaroseball, and www.instagram.com/victoriaroseball.

4. Tiger by Lisa Parker at lisamakesthings.tumblr.com, lisa31parker@yahoo.co.uk and Instagram.com/lisaparkerillustration/

I really love the small pocket books with plain papers because they make good sketchbooks.

Bookmarks are things that I can never have enough of because I'm always reading more than one book at a time and I tend to lose bookmarks easily. This one is really pretty.

I've never heard of Atelier but this is a beautiful A5 notebook that comes from France. It had 120 sheets of removable plain paper. It can be used for sketching or even as a diary. 

Finally, Stabilo pens and a pencil. All with different colors and size of nibs. These pens are sturdy, I have a few of them in other colors.

I looked across the internet to figure out the cost of everything. For the bookmark and the pocket notebook I could only find approximate prices. The rest I got the prices from their respective websites. The only things I could not find prices for were the postcards. 

Subscription price: 25 pounds

Approximate price of the stuff in the box: 35 pounds.

Spotlight Stationery

          Apart from loving everything that I have gotten from this box subscription I love that part of the money that I paid for it goes to a charity. The charity is Gloucestershire Young Carers. Here is the leaflet that was included in the box:

          The theme for this box is Hergestellt in Deutschland (Made in Germany). The products included are from the following companies: Bindewerk, Mobius & Ruppert, Rico Design, Schneider, Stabilo, and Staedtler.

          As you can see everything was wrapped beautifully with blue tissue paper. And of course, the personalised touch is very much appreciated.

          The first company is Bindewerk and its contribution to the box is the cute handmade notebook and patterned envelopes. I especially love the tickets for the addresses. The company's base is in southern Germany.

          From Mobius & Rupert we get the brass coloured, barrel-shaped pencil sharpener, and from Rico Design, we get the brass coloured binder clips. The pens, pencils and eraser came from Schneider, Stabilo and Staedtler.

          Finally, in the personalised envelope, there were four postcards from a single artist called Dhekelia Lennon. They all have interesting faces and poses. 

Another great selection from Spotlight Stationery. Plus I love that I am doing something good too.

Spotlight Stationery (April 2017)

          I was waiting for this box to arrive. I've loved everything in the February and March boxes and I really wanted to know what weird product was in this box. I wasn't disappointed. 

          As usual, Kuwait customs were not nice to the tissue paper. 💁 This month's theme is Flora and Fauna.

     Spotlight Stationery is one of the few box subscriptions that I get that does a personalised envelope and I really like it. The envelope had a collection of very beautiful and cute postcards.

1. The one with the leaves is by Elena O'Neill

2. The Space Wrestling Flyers is by Adam Forster 

3. Humorous Animal Character is by Yion Lim

4.  The Eleventh Hour is by Emily Clout

      

          The next two things go together. They are the Longtree notebook and Card. They both have very bold colours (two of my favourites in fact) and feature silhouettes of flowers and seed heads. I really enjoy the pocket notebooks as I go through them fairly quickly so I am always happy to see them in a box. With this card, my stash is growing nicely with different sorts of cards.

         These pencils are Rossi pencils. They are wrapped in Italian paper and are decorated with a peacock feather pattern. I'm almost afraid to use them, but use them I will...I go through pencils at an alarming rate.

           In every Spotlight Stationery box that I've seen so far, there was one product that made me go hmmmm. This pen was it. I kept trying to figure out how to open it and why it had a rubber tip at the end. Turns out you just extend it, exposing the writing tip and the rubber end can be used as a stylus for a smart phone or a tablet. The pen is made by Zebra.

      Finally, we have a notebook. The notebook is created by Lizzie Barker and it is called Creature Candy Notebook. Every time you purchase any product from Creature Candy, including these Creature Candy notebooks, 10% of the sale price goes to six different British wildlife charities.

You can subscribe to Spotlight Stationery on CrateJoy or you can find them on their website.

**The purchase of this stationery box includes a donation to Gloucestershire Young Carers, a charity which provides a range of services for young carers and their families. 

Spotlight Stationary Review

          As you'll be able to see from the picture I have two boxes to review for Spotlight Stationary: February 2017 and March 2017.

          My February box was lost in the big badlands of snail mail and when I contacted the curators of the box they were awesome. They followed up with me a few times then said they will resend the February box with the March box.

February 2017

          I'm going to start my review with the February box. The poor box obviously passed through the hands of Kuwait customs. The seal was broken and the tissue paper ripped. Still, there was enough pretty tissue for me to add on to my tissue paper stash. 😀

          I enjoyed reading about how the theme of the month, Letterpress, came about. I also loved reading about the small businesses that the products come from.

          Blue is the dominant color of the box and it is a very beautiful shade of blue. I love it when boxes include an envelope with my name on it. It feels personal and all about me.

          Inside the envelope were four postcards with the fifth one telling you where to find the artists of the illustrations on the cards. They were all cute but my favorite was the one with the sheep.

          I love writing cards to people and sending snail mail, so the next two items in the box were right up my ally. Two packets of writing cards with a cute bunny running, one in blue and one in red, with matching envelopes. There were also 3 tags with a duck on each one and 3 small cards with their envelopes.

          Finally, a small personal sized notebook, hand stitched with a detachable cover that can be used with other notebooks of the same size.

March 2017

          Now I'm going to review the March box. Again the poor box was opened and searched. The theme of this box is double act. I was intrigued. 

          In the personalized envelope there were four beautifully illustrated postcards. My favorite is the bird.

          The next item is the green or orange notebook, which depends on whether you are looking at the front or back cover. I have a sleeve bag that has the same illustration so I'm in love with this little notebook.

          The box also includes a jumbo double sided red and green pencil and an art pen. I can't wait to use both in my lettering and drawings.

          Finally, there was the most beautiful and unique notebook I've ever seen. It is a Daycraft Signature Due notebook. And the reason it is unique can be seen in the video below.

          All in all, I loved both boxes. They had a lot of enjoyable items and most of all I am very excited by the Daycraft notebook.