I'm trying to visit every major U.S.
art shop in 24 hours.
I'm on the hunt for deal I can't get
in Australia, scouring every shelf for the best bargains
and hoping all these art supplies will make it home.
I don't have a car, don't have a budget, and I don't have much space in my luggage.
My first stop is Blick Art materials in Fullerton.
There are over 65 Blick stores in the USA and zero in Australia.
So the sheer size of this place is crazy.
And I'm already feeling like it's going
to be a bigger challenge than I first expected to restrict myself to only buying
the supplies that will fit in my luggage for the trip home.
Yes. We have to buy them... When they're on sale.
You know I'll get teal right? Buy six and... $3.15 each.
This is so much cheaper than Australian prices.
$3...
Math brain... Shopping for art,
I shouldn't have to do maths. Look how far we've from the door, and I haven't...
And I bought this and this.
And they're the only two things we've looked at so far,
and we're in the first shop.
No!
Is this for my safety or for the budget's safety?
For everybody safety.
Shane's blocking me from going in reverse so that I don't go back and buy more.
It's like a one way street.
So much stuff.
I want it all.
I didn't know there were this many things.
What is rubber cement pickup?
Like, what is that? Granulation medium,
iridescent medium, texture medium,
gum arabic, masking
medium, lifting preparation,
colorless art masking fluid,
art masking fluid.
I don't even know what all this is.
I've got so much to learn.
Everything here is just like giant. I want one of those!
I don't know what for, but I
just want it! Gesso.
Gesso?
No, don't start that again.
Do you think this gesso will fit in a suitcase?
A mini one! Look at them, they're little! Look how little they are!
Can't you just cut your big sheet down to little ones?
But then it wouldn't be a mini pad.
Yes.
I found some great bargains here, including a set of Caran d'Ache pencils
that were shamefully hidden away in the clearance section.
We're going to have to rescue them.
And some heavily discounted Tombow ABT Pro
jewel tip alcohol markers, which I decided to stock up on.
I wanted to buy the whole shop, but I was good, mostly.
And I've already spent over $200 in our first shop.
So Shane is starting to wish that we set
a limit on our spending for this art supply haul.
I think we did okay for our first shop.
Next, I'm heading to Hobby Lobby.
There was a lot of fun stuff here,
and I wish we had a shop more like this in Australia.
This is like the fun section of our Kmart, but, like, the size of our Bunnings.
I didn't find many art supplies that I wanted to buy.
We have to do this.
But I did find some other essential purchases, and I was amazed at the huge
range of beautiful fake flowers and leaves.
Why don't we get good fake flowers like these in Australia?
Our fake flowers are either expensive or terrible.
I would definitely come here for homewares.
There is a lot of decor that we liked
and would afford if we didn't have to carry it to the other side of the world.
But I'm supposed to be buying art
supplies, so I should probably at least add something to my cart, right?
Michael was a little more back to the kind of art supplies I was looking for.
And I found myself wanting to buy everything again.
Like whatever you want to learn, it's just here.
I don't know what I'd do with them,
but I feel like knowing how good the distressed inks are,
these look exciting to me.
Well, they have teal!
We should give them a try. Yes.
Given what happened to this one, I don't think I want them in our suitcase.
No. Oh dear.
I don't think I've ever seen so many different art papers in one place.
And I had no idea
some of these brands offered so many different types of paper.
And the paper is much cheaper here than I can get it in Australia.
I did a paper comparison video.
I didn't even know that these were like... There were so many.
They always put the Copic behind locks.
They don't trust me.
The Copic markers were tempting because
these costs are around eleven Australian dollars back at home.
But Michaels wasn't the cheapest price of these, so I might have to keep looking.
I probably should have bought them back at Blick.
Gelly Rolls.
I went to buy Gelly Rolls online and they were so expensive.
They're actually not too bad here.
These stardust ones are like glitter.
Well, that's cool.
Tempted just to get one.
I don't know how much it is.
There's no price here.
But the packs are cheaper than I see them online.
So maybe there's no price because it's really expensive.
That's a bit sad.
I spent much less than Michael than at Blick.
But my shopping spree isn't over yet.
This would be so much easier if we had a car.
It's a bit too hot for all this walking.
Joanne wasn't as much of an art shop as it was a fabric and crafts shop
and at this point I'm starting to get tired and hot.
I still enjoy browsing, but didn't find as many art supplies overall.
I ended up buying some Crayola
Crayons that I'm pretty sure weren't any cheaper than Australia.
And I found some planner stickers in the clearance section.
Dice? $30! So... no dice?
So far I visited four art shops and it's now 04:30 p.m.
I didn't really think this through because the last art shop closes at 05:00 p.m..
So we are not going to make it today.
Instead, we will head back to the hotel,
see just how much room is left in the suitcase, and head out again first
thing in the morning to our final art shop.
So last night we packed our suitcases and they are pretty heavy, so we
don't have a lot of room left
for this last shop.
But it's looking pretty big, so I don't know how we're going to go,
what we're going to find,
we're just going to have to see.
Get in the basket now.
That's tiny.
Go get me a bigger one.
Thank you.
What are these?
No way! Oh, I want them all.
Oh, they're so cheap.
Oh, look at the pretty colors.
Can I just take like, every color?
Why can't we get paper like this?
Look at this deal.
So this art shop should probably have been one of our first stops, not our last,
because so far it is proving to be one of the best.
It is huge and I am already finding so many bargains.
So a huge thank you to Chloe Rose, who suggested that I stop here on my visit.
Chloe and I actually met up for the first
time in real life when I was here in California and we swapped books
for a creative challenge that you can watch on my channel later.
And by the way, this shop is the Art Supply Warehouse.
Durer Magnus, Albrecht Durer... Oh, these are calling me.
Maybe it was in the Matrix.
When they call and then you leave.
No, we're not leaving.
I resisted buying any Copic markers
from all the shops that I have visited during my shopping spree in the U.S.
I already have a huge range of Copic and other alcohol markers and I don't know
which colors I'm missing, so no more Copic's for me.
Now we're reaching the pencils... uh oh!
With all the pencils that I already own
you might be wondering, why do I keep buying more pencils?
I have them. I have them.
This is a really sad reflection on me as a purchaser.
Well, I'm not just collecting for the sake of collecting.
I am on a mission to buy some of every set
of colored pencils that I can find so that I can do an epic ultimate colored
pencil comparison with every brand in the world.
And not every brand is available
in Australia, or at least not as cheap as they are in the USA.
So I've been adding plenty of new pencils to my cart today.
It's not hoarding, it's helping.
I feel like I should buy one.
Can't you just use the thin ones, but just use it more?
Yeah, but then I don't have one.
Look, it's like the vintage packaging.
Spare white pencils and a spare white Prismacolor from... No...!
Coloring Pencil, watercolor and wax crayon in one.
How can it be all three?
Oh, these are colored pencils.
They're only seventy nine cents, so might as well try them... it's for the channel!
This shop has been one of my favorites, but also the hardest because I have hardly
any space left in my suitcase at this point.
I'm not limited by budget today.
I am limited by space.
And I'd hate to go to all this effort and spend all this money and not be able
to bring these new art supplies home, but I have
been pretty conservative, I think. No, you haven't.
But at a shop like this,
there's not a whole lot in my basket when you consider how much is here.
Shane stop. Stop trying to make your point.
You're not making your point.
I don't even want to open these.
I just know that it's full of amazing big paper.
Shane, don't.
These can't fit in our suitcase. Walk away.
I'm not sure whether this trip is, like,
exciting because of all the bargains I've got, or depressing because it's like we're
going to leave and get on an airplane in a few hours.
This is not accessible anymore to us.
It's time to finish up my shopping
and finally check out, knowing that I am done with this art haul.
And while I came in expecting to spend just a few dollars in this final shop,
I actually spent more here than every other shop so far.
We finished the day with an essential first time tourist experience right before
heading to the airport to head back to Australia.
Unfortunately, the trip home came with some unexpected bad news.
They lost my bag.
So I'm back in Australia, and my plan was to have a closer look
at some of these art supplies and compare my USA shopping spree against what it
would have cost me to buy some of these items here in Australia.
So it's a good thing the airline found my bag.
It's now been three months since I've returned from the USA,
and I've tried very hard not to open or use these supplies until this video.
Although I have already tried the white
pens and the inks and the black paper in my white pen video recently,
there are definitely a few non essential purchases here.
But I have also ended up with some really
good bargains and art supplies that I'm excited to try.
This Happy Planner sticker book was
from the clearance section, and it was marked down to actually $8.78.
The Caran d'Ache Swiss color, I paid just $10.36.
And on Amazon, this would have cost $27, or even in Australia, $25.
This little mini pad of black paper, I only paid $2 for this,
and when I looked it up on Amazon, it usually costs $5.50. Or if I had
to bought this here in Australia, it would have cost me $12.
I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with this one.
It's so cute.
The Molotow Aqua Twin Pencils seem to be
selling for about $40 - $50 for a set of six.
So two for $5 was an absolute steal.
And the Tombow ABT Pro sets, they are usually $6 for an individual
marker, or $20 - $30 for a set like this. In Australia, they're about $25 for one of these sets.
So this was probably my favorite bargain of the day, and I totally stocked up.
The bargains are even more significant when I consider the prices that I would
have paid for some of these other items back in Australia.
All of the art papers are much cheaper in the U.S.
And the weight makes it hard to get sent over to Australia.
So this is definitely worth adding to your
luggage in small quantities if you are ever an Aussie visiting a US art shop.
The Artist Loft pencils,
I paid $10 for these, but in Australia, they would have cost me almost $30.
The Black Wing colored pencils,
I just wouldn't have wanted to spend $50 on these in Australia.
So I'm glad that I found them because I am
trying to buy every brand of pencil for a future video.
And the costs are starting to add up.
These are distressed Mica sprays
and the Shimmer sprays were half the price in the U.S.
Compared to buying them in Australia.
And then there are some items that are just so hard to find in Australia
that the Amazon prices go crazy high, like the Maxon Comic Inc.
In a case like this, I would probably just
buy something else because this is not worth $42 when it's supposed to be seven.
I spent the most at Blick and at the Art Supply Warehouse.
And of all the shops I visited, these two were my favorite.
When shopping specifically for art supplies. They had the best bargains,
the biggest range of art, and the items that I couldn't find anywhere else.
And both shops were very comparable in their pricing.
I did do some research and found as many
of these items as I could on Amazon, Australia and other Australian websites,
and only half of these items were available at all.
But for what I could find, it would have cost me at least $1,148 Australian dollars.
So shopping in the U.S.
has saved me about $200USD today on my haul,
and it found me some things that I could not have found here at home.
It's too bad that a plane ticket cost
about five times that, or I would probably make a special trip just
to buy art supplies.
I need to find some new projects to try
out all these new supplies, so let me know which ones that you would
like to see me use first or if you have any ideas for me to try and subscribe to
see them in my upcoming videos.
Okay, it's confession time.
I didn't even know who Bob Ross was until I saw him on Jazza's Channel.
But apparently he's a really big deal
with the outworld in America, and he was in every shop that we visited.
"We don't make mistakes,
we have happy accidents."
Oh, wait, he's got batteries,
paintbrush, dipping candy.
I don't know about this. Mix colors is for a flavor masterpiece.
The only way in is to behead Bob Ross.
Just going to sit here and eat this now
it's pretty good.
We're supposed to go to lunch time. But I'm just eating sherbert instead.