I have wanted to sign up for a subscription box for a long time and never found the right one to commit to. I considered boxes like Lootcrate or the Pusheen Box that have great quality products delivered to you, but the last thing that I wanted was more “stuff” in my home. After you move over 10 times in your life, you realize how much work moving all your crap is. Especially the things that aren’t essential to your life.
So then I decided to look into art boxes. I had considered an art box for a long time, I just wasn’t sure which one. I figured that even though I would be getting more “things”, at least they would be things that I could use.
After I did a little more digging, I narrowed it down to ArtSnacks and SketchBox. I wanted to make sure that whoever I was subscribing to looked legit. Some problems I saw with the lesser known boxes was that people were not receiving anything, even though they paid for their subscription. Not cool. However, my main concern for whichever one I ended up choosing was to make sure that I was getting a great deal in return for my subscription. So, after doing some price comparisons, I finally decided that I would try out ArtSnacks.
What I liked about ArtSnacks is that they seemed to have built up a pretty stable community. They have a lot of scheduled demos of their products, and their website looked pretty great as well. It may seem silly to only judge a company by their website, but from a designer’s standpoint, it means so much. The main one being that a company that doesn’t put any care into updating or changing the look of their website shows to me that they are lazy. If you have the diligence to keep up your website, add blogs and are constantly updating your content, then it proves that you care about your customer experience. Anyway, that was a side tangent, but I just wanted to emphasize why that makes such a huge difference.
Back to ArtSnacks.
So far my first box has been a lot of fun. Right off the bat I was given tools that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. That may sound bad, but it wasn’t. The whole point of getting a surprise box of art supplies is that it can challenge be to try out different mediums, instead of sticking to what I was always used to: pens. The first box that I received did have a couple pens, but it also had acrylic ink that could also work well with water, as well as a pen that would work with water as well. I’ll be the first to point out that I was never formally trained to work with watercolors. I always wanted to learn, but never really put the time in, figure it out. It was always guess work. Thankfully with their demo ArtSnacks challenge, I was at least pointed in the right direction.
I think that the #artsnackschallenge that they ask their customers to participate in is fantastic. It lit up a creative spark in me that I haven’t had in a long time. I ended up doing art all weekend long with the tools that they gave me. It really felt great to be making things with my hands again, especially after such a long dry spell or just computer work or just overall being busy with life.
What I’m beginning to see is that I need art in my life, more consistently. It’s always been a goal of mine to keep doing more, but I always seem to have excuses to not. I think that this has been a really good decision on my part. For now I signed up for 6 months, so we’ll see by the end if I decide to continue it from there.
Until then, I am really enjoying these little presents to myself, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is also thinking of subscribing to an art subscription box.
404 Modal
2 Replies to “Got me some ArtSnacks”