Hello, and welcome back to Jenna Gets Creative! Today it's ScrawlrBox time again, and we are
doing the August 2019 box. That means it was mailed out in August, I got it in September
(hopefully, because I'm planning to put in September) hopefully you're seeing this in
September! I don't know what's it yet. This is an empty box. Let's get into it!
I'm going to jump right into reading the card in a minute, but I wanted to mention that
the art piece you'll be watching for most of this video is not done in the included
sketchbook. I tried and horribly failed a couple times to draw in the sketchbook with
these pens, and although I really do think I'm going to like both the paper and the pens
for other things, they really didn't play nicely together for me. I tried to do a colourful
mandala inspired by a rose window on Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi cathedral in Italy,
and it ended up looking like my toddler coloured it in. Not good! I blame that 90% on the materials,
10% on how tired I was the night I decided to open the box and film. I couldn't wait.
It was here, and ArtSnacks Plus was here, and I filmed them both in the same night,
and I really shouldn't have... The piece I ended up doing last minute to have something
more appealing to look at is my "Rainbow Renaissance" rendition of Study of the Hands of an Apostle
by Albrecht Dürer, and although I'm not doing it on the paper included in this particular
box, I am using a sheet of Canaleto Liscia paper from a previous ScrawlrBox.
On with the card! August 2019 ScrawlrBox, box #48 (and personally
my 16th ScrawlrBox), received here on this little rock in the middle of the Atlantic
ocean during the second week of September. Coming to you now in the third week of September,
probably around the same time that shipping notifications for the September box have gone
out. The joys of living in Canada and subscribing to international services!
The top blurb on the card says "Think back to a classical style of art for this box,
but bring it into the 21st century with the latest innovation in ink technology. Use this
month's featured art as inspiration for your own colourful interpretation of an artwork
from one of the great masters. Our artist chose Michelangelo's David, who and what will
you choose? "ScrawlrTip: Try blending more than one colour
at a time to really start experimenting with what these pens can do and the colours you
can create." First up for supplies we have "Chameleon Color
Blending Fineliners. The newest addition to the Chameleon family was elegantly crafted
to incorporate Chameleon colour blending technology into a fine point Japanese precision 0.3mm
metal clad tip. These fineliners have a patented dual ink system, with ink in the pen and ink
the cap! To blend colours, all you have to do is switch the cap to another pen (hold
vertically for a better transfer), leave it a few seconds, and make vibrant colour to
colour blends! Filled with water-based, washable ink that won't bleed through most papers or
dry out when left with the cap off for up to 2 days. Six colour pens, with multiple
colour combinations." The suggested retail price in pounds is £1.99 each, which works
out to £11.94 for the set of 6. As usual, I will have all the prices down below in pounds
and converted to Canadian and American dollars. I looked up the actual price of a 6 pack of
these fineliners, and on Chameleon's own website, their 6 packs cost £12.99, so ScrawlrBox
does get us a deal. This is also a slightly different colour combination than any of their
regular retail 6 packs. At a glance it's almost the Primary Colors 6 pack, but we got a grey
instead of a purple. I've got more to say about these pens, but let's get through the
rest of the card first. Next up, "Pilot DR Drawing Pen 05. A technical
drawing pen with fast-drying, highly water-resistant, and light-fast black pigment ink. The hard-wearing
plastic tip is ideal for drawing and sketching. Pilot Drawing pens are not just for artists
and designers, but for anyone looking for a solid, reliable fineline pen! The unique
pen cap contains a system that circulates the ink in the pen tip while the pen is capped.
This prevents the tip from drying out while not in use, so that the next time you want
to write, the pen will deliver a smooth line from the very start!" Suggested retail price
is £3.65. We also get a "Staedtler Lumograph 4H Pencil.
The Lumograph pencil is highly recognisable with its blue, black and white livery. A premium-quality
tool ideal for all artists with a special lead formulation providing a supreme metallic
lustre. It is especially break-resistant thanks to super-bonded 2mm lead. It's easy to erase
and easy to sharpen with any quality sharpener. The perfect pencil for some light sketching
before adding any line-work." Suggested retail price is £1.60.
And finally, "Crok'Book by Clairefontaine. The handy and flexible Clairefontaine Crok'Book
contains 24 sheets of white, 160gsm, PEFC paper, stapled into a 270g Maya card cover
embossed with the company's logo. This high quality paper is made in France and has a
fine tooth surface that is acid free. The perfect sketchbook companion to the supplies
included in this box." Suggested retail price £3.20.
And as I mentioned already, the prompt this month is "Rainbow Renaissance."
Did anyone else notice the distinct lack of both eraser AND pencil sharpener? I'm certainly
not complaining, since I own enough of both, but it's rare for ScrawlrBox to send us a
graphite pencil without its own eraser and not also send an eraser nor a sharpener.
By the way, before I get on with my review of the products, if you're new here, don't
forget to subscribe and ring the bell for notifications. I upload every Tuesday and
Thursday at minimum, and some weeks I also have bonus videos. I'm an art channel, so
most of my videos are timelapsed art footage like this, either presented as a review or
tutorial, or just a rambling story time voice over, but sometimes I switch things up and
do crafts as well. If you like this video, don't forget to hit the like button and leave
a comment down below. I really do appreciate it, and I read every comment, and I do respond
to everyone. Did you get this box? What did YOU think of it?
Alright, so, the Chameleon pens. I didn't read the card or the pamphlet that came with
the pens right away, so you may have noticed me shining a light into the caps when I noticed
how long they are. Much like the "color tops" on their markers, there is an ink well and
marker nib up in there on each cap so that you can use the caps to transfer colour onto
other pens, rather than doing the straight tip-to-tip I tested first. Both methods work.
Being that these are Chameleon products and they work the same way as their markers, I
actually assumed it was alcohol ink, so I was surprised when the swatches diluted during
my water test. Knowing that they're water based, obviously I'm no longer surprised,
but I AM now surprised they stand up so well to being layered under alcohol ink. They do
create gradients and come clean again very nicely, and you can even layer in multiple
colours by putting multiple caps onto the pens one after another before using the pen
and letting the inks flow out again. And of course, since they're just a small 0.3mm fineliner
nib, you really don't have to let the colour transfer very long at all. You may have noticed
me tapping on the caps when I was testing the 3 way blend. You don't have to tap them,
I was just pacing out the time I had each cap on the pen so I was getting the same amount
of ink transferred out of each cap. It probably looked a lot more aggressive sped up for timelapse
than it was in real life. Another thing to note, since these are water based inks, is
that they WILL eat the paper if you're not careful. The red in this set seems to be the
worst offender for that. This is an interesting colour selection they've
given us. Like I said earlier, it's almost their primaries pack, but we got a grey instead
of a purple. I'm not complaining about that! I have been wanting a light grey liner for
my collection that's smaller than an 05, so that's very welcome. I really like the blue,
teal, and pink colours as well. The yellow is very hard to see on white paper, and the
red is a very dull, brick sort of shade. That's disappointing, since red is my favourite colour.
I'd much rather have a vibrant cadmium red than this! They're excellent as fineliners,
both for doodling and for line art, but like most pens with tiny nibs, they're absolutely
NOT a good filling in colouring tool. Scrubbing at the page, which you might end up doing
by mistake when trying to fill an area with colour, will end up eating the page, and overlaps
will always be very dark and highly visible. You're never going to get smooth, solid colour
over large areas with these pens. In the future I will stick to using them as fineliners and
not as markers. I also wanted to note that Chameleon advises storing these pens flat.
That's because if you store them vertically caps up, eventually you'll deplete the ink
well in the cap, and if you store them caps down, the ink will run from the pen body ink
well into the cap ink well. That is how you're meant to "recharge" the cap if you do lots
of blending, but it's not something you want the pens doing for days on end while not in
use. That, combined with the fact that they're much longer than most fineliner pens, means
I can't easily store them the way I store the rest of my art pens. Right now they're
laying flat on top of my watercolour markers, but that's going to get messy having them
together in the same slot on my marker case, so I'm going to have to find a different spot
to put 6 lonely, long pens that I'll probably end up reaching for somewhat regularly in
the future... The Pilot fineliner is a good pen. It's nothing
particularly notable compared to other top quality pigment fineliners, but I do think
the cap system is a very cool idea, and I wouldn't be opposed to getting more of them
some time. Particularly if I could find them in sizes I don't normally get, or different
colours. At £3.65, though, that works out to nearly $6 CAD, so that's definitely on
the pricey end for a single fineliner. The pencil is great. I LOVE Staedtler pencils.
Those and Faber-Castell's drawing graphite pencils are my favourites. The Viking pencil
I got in a ScrawlrBox earlier this year is probably next in line for favourites. I do
have the regular full range box set of Staedtler Mars Lumograph pencils, from 8B to 2H, plus
F, and then I have a whole bunch of extra 2H pencils since that's my preferred sketching
lead. This one's a 4H, so that's a nice new addition to the collection.
As for the sketchbook, I'm really excited to get to try out paper from Clairefontaine,
since I've been hearing a lot about their Pastelmat papers in the last year. I don't
think I'll actually try pastels on this, though, since it's tiny and a sketchbook, which could
get messy with such a smudgeable medium. Whenever the water-based pens seemed to be chewing
this paper up, it was only doing surface damage. I didn't come anywhere close to eating holes
though the sheets at all. There is some ghosting on the reverse side of pages where alcohol
ink and the blue Chameleon pen were used, but no bleed through to the next sheet. Folding
the cover open at first was awkward, because it's just 2 staples holding it together, and
they're not placed very close to the ends of the spine, so the heavier cover wanted
to crumple and bend in weird ways. Now that I've opened it a couple times, it is easy
to crease the spine area of each new page to get it to lay flat open, but now it no
longer closes nice and flat. Definitely a sketch book for doodling, planning, and testing
the paper, not a place to do finished works. Maybe it'll get some good use next month during
Inktober. We shall see! Overall I'm happy to have got this box. I
like all the supplies, I just don't like them together or for this prompt. I think these
pens would have been an excellent choice back when they sent us a bullet journal themed
box, and they also easily could have a done a mandala or doodling themed box with these,
rather than presenting them to us like a colouring tool.
By the way, I'm going to be doing a "ScrawlrBox: Is It Worth It?" review video in November,
because November 1st is when my 12 month subscription renews, so it'll be the start of my second
year-long subscription with them, and depending on when I film I will have already posted
either my 19th or 20th ScrawlrBox unboxing. I'm going to run through the costs and usual
savings, show you all the supplies I've received from ScrawlrBox overall and from a consecutive
12 month span, and probably do some art with as many of the supplies as I can. I'm hoping
it'll be a lot of fun, and perhaps a little more informative about art subscription boxes
than just the snapshot that each of these individual unboxing videos give you. I'm not
being sponsored by ScrawlrBox at all (though I'd love it if they see this and decide to
sponsor me!). I do subscribe just like everyone else. I just really love this service in particular,
and I've been having so much fun with art subscription boxes over the last 2 years.
That video will cover every ScrawlrBox from the April 2018 box up to the October 2019
box, so feel free to leave a comment down below if you've got questions, or if you really
want to see a particular item come back in the art piece I do in that video.
Thursday is going to be a one-off unboxing and review of the new ArtSnacks Plus box.
I found a coupon that made the first box on a new subscription a really great deal, so
I started a new Plus monthly subscription just to get it and try it out, but I won't
be continuing with it at this time. Expensive, yada yada. Come back for that! See you then.