Spotlight Stationery August 2016 Box Review

In my review of the July Box from Spotlight Stationery I mentioned I was eager to see the contents of the august box and then decide if I was going to subscribe to it (bi)monthly or not. It arrived a few weeks ago and finally have the time to review it here. If you are cleaver, you can guess the theme by the contents above :) Shown are postcards from artists at National Star and the note card is from The City Works.

On the appearance of the box: It actually fits through the mail slot which I really appreciate because there is no hassle to pick it up at the post office if the delivery was made when I was not at home to receive it! Also it's always so nicely packaged on the inside with the Spotlight Stationery logo sticker, slogan stamp and gorgeous blue tissue wrapping paper.

What I also definitely appreciate the personal touch with an envelope in my fave color addressed to me (also handwritten!) I am sure that using my fave shade of turquoise for an envelope was a total coincidence, as they used it (I think) because it's the second color in their logo :)

On to the content: This month's theme is, as stated on the explanatory note, Architecture with a emphases on buildings and skylines. The note with the theme and explanation of each item in the box speaks a lot about the care and effort they take in curating it. It's definitely not just randomly thrown together! 

This time the box was stuffed with two really cool pocket notebooks: The City Works Debossed notebook on the left and the Riba Museum Pocket Journal on the right. Let's take a closer look at them below.

The Southbank Debossed Notebook from The City Works has such a beautiful and unique cover! It has a raised "debossed" hand pressed cover which is fun and pleasing to the touch. The notebook is A6 sized, blank notebook with 144 pages in it, which lays flat in use so it can be great for sketching on the go. I'm really liking the look of this notebook! The Kensington greeting card, which you have might have noticed on the first picture in this post, is from the same makers as this notebook. 

The other book is a "Museums and Galleries" pocket journal, published by RIBA Publishing, which stands for the Royal Institution of British Architects. It's has 178 lined pages, with a storage pocket in the back and a magnetic closure "flap"on the front. The cover design is adapted from a drawing by Charles Robert Cockerell "the most famous building in the world" and is in the collection of RIBA Archives and Libraries. Now being Archivist/Librarian myself I know you can find amazing treasures from the past in unknown archives, like this beautiful drawing! I'm glad that RIBA is making these accessible for us and the sales of these books benefits the RIBA Architectural Library as well. And helping Archives and Libraries stay open and free of use for public is something I fully support!

About the pens that were included: on the bottom you see the uniball eye roller ball pen in fine with black waterproof ink. It's an instant fave! I had used these before a long time ago and happy to get reacquainted with them again :) New to me is the uni ball air on top which I received in blue and with a broad tip.  It doesn't say it's waterproof on the pen, but in the product description it says it is when dried. I should test it before I try it with watercolors, though! It also has a fun tipping, you can write thick or thin depending on the angle you write with. So sorta like a fountain pen or a pentel tradio, but this has a round tip. I could use them both in my art work for sure. 

FYI: The London city silhouette bookmark you see below the pens was not listed, but have seen in other pictures of the box that they all have it and I suspect it was just thrown in there as a fun extra :) 

In conclusion: The content of the box is worth more than the 25£/30€ subscription fee for sure. This month we have received not 4 but 6 postcards (9,50€ for the set), 2 uni ball pens (2,50€ each), a hand pressed greeting card (3,50€) and two notebooks (blank - 13€ and lined 10€) The prices are based on what I found for each item upon searching the products through google. Bringing the total value of the august box 41€ ex. shipping. 

That is definitely not bad a bad deal at all! I also really liked the contents of this box and like the July box, this one is also sold out. But Spotlight Stationery still have a few of their past boxes for sale and they recently added the postcards sets to their shop as well. And if you so desire you can always subscribe to the Stationery box on a monthly or bi-monthly basis (the september box ships on the 23rd this week!). 

So the question remains, will I or won't I get a subscription. I have really thought about it and even though I really liked the content of both the July and August boxes at this time I won't be getting a subscription. This is purely because of 1) Budgeting reasons (there is a Penshow coming up in Tilburg later this month which I am saving my pennies for...) and 2) my stationery hoarding is getting WAY out of control! While I like getting new products to try, I actually need to TRY and USE them as well and not just get new stuff all the time. Like these pocket notebooks, I have like 5 different ones sitting in my closet to use. Now it's 7... Sigh, it's been an ongoing issue with me and trying to get better at using and not hoarding. So for these personal reasons I am not indulging getting a subscription (at this point in time) but I DEFINITELY recommend it as the Spotlight Stationery team surely do a great job in curating these boxes!

Hope this review was useful to you if you have been thinking about subscribing to the Spotlight Stationery box. 

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

namasté

Disclaimer: I was not in any way compensated by Spotlight Stationery for this review. There are no affiliated links and the opinions reflected above are completely my own.