All the Ame

Well, so much for posting more often in 2019 (눈_눈)

Oh well, onwards and upwards. New year, new planner, new stationery. Because refreshing the stationery hoard is a good way to start the year!

This year I purchased some things from Cute Things from Japan. I came across this store when someone I follow on Instagram shared their purchase, which is how I find most new stores these days really but I’m surprised I never found it when ‘cute things from Japan’ is definitely a phrase I’ve searched before. They have a physical store in Tokyo as well as their online store and I think they are quite a small scale operation, run by sisters Ayako & Junko. At the time of writing their website is unavailable so I can’t give you much more information than that because I don’t remember, I made this order months ago ^^;

I actually got really excited before I even opened this package because…

Stamps! Real, post marked stamps! Even though I buy things from Japan regularly this is my first time getting actual postage stamps (guess my parcels are usually too big/heavy ^^;) and since I really enjoy collecting stamps, this was such a great bonus.

Because I ordered this in the run up to Christmas, the store surprised me by wrapping everything in festive paper finished with a cute bow, tag and Christmas themed washi tape. How sweet of them! Since this was basically a Christmas present to myself I really appreciated the effort ｡^‿^｡

Here’s what’s inside:

There were some cute little freebies inside the brown envelope too along with a thank you note and a newsletter:

Handwritten thank you notes always make me happy and kawaii memo pages always have a use ^_^

All the things! I noticed this store carries a lot of stationery brands I’ve seen/heard of but not tried because they’re expensive as  so what I picked was partly based on brand hype, partly based on an ever present love of dogs, pastel colours and food.

First up, two sets of doggo stickers. I wish the website was up because there was something special about the washi used for each of them that interested me at the time, but right now I don’t remember exactly what it was. Here they are anyway:

Simply titled Flake Stickers- Dog this pack cost $3.90. There are five different designs and a total of 20 sticker flakes. I love the soft colours and gold highlights, they don’t look it but they feel textured and are quite thick. Use them all and your planner can be as chunky as this adorable doggo (≧◡≦)

Wan Day Flake Stickers – Dog ($3.90)

These ones are made from Furukawa paper and have a very visible texture in person, not so much in photos, that really stands out against other washi stickers I own. I like the designs on these ones because my dog also picks up random items then makes cute but derpy faces, haha. Again these are thick and really good quality, you get what you pay for for sure.

Left: Planner Stickers – Totoro ($3.90). I thought it was cool to see some official ‘Approved by Studio Ghibli’ Totoro stickers for once, so in the basket they went! It’s not hard to find a place in the planner for Ghibli stickers, always a good choice.

Right: Midori Sticker Marché Stickers Doughnut ($2.90). Midori first caught my eye for their notebooks, so of course I buy stickers. Because that’ll tell me anything I want to know about the paper quality in those notebooks, right? Haha. Actually, I noticed almost all the designs in this range were sold out so I figured they were popular for a reason, I picked doughnuts because they were available more than because I have any particular love for doughnuts so a less useful purchase perhaps but hey. They’ll find a place too.

The Totoro stickers are your typical shiny plastic planner seals, the Midori are washi. Both are translucent, both look good in the planner but the Midori really stand out with their bold colours and clean, borderless design. They’re much brighter than I expected. I prefer their matte finish too.

I’d definitely pick up the other designs in the range/other Midori stickers in general, I’d expect to pay more for this kind of quality. The Totoro stickers I didn’t find all that different from the many unofficial ones I’ve had over the years so…I’ll enjoy them, there’s nothing wrong with them, but won’t be going back for the other designs unless they’re on sale. They’re pretty expensive for what you get ^^;

Finally, I picked up some MT washi tapes:

I didn’t have any solid coloured washi tapes in my stash (not sure how that happened!), so I picked up three of the pastel colours (MT01P306, MT01P355 and MT01P305) as well as a silver grid pattern because I like the whole solid colour/grid pattern layering combo everyone seems to do in their journal posts. Silver was the only one that wasn’t sold out when I was ordering but that’s okay, I figured it’d match all three pastel shades well enough. They were $2.00 each.

I’m really torn about these. The colours are SO much more vibrant in photos than they are in real life, I wondered if I’d just shot/edited the photos poorly but…they look really bright on other sites too. In person they’re pretty, but they’re very pale and the colours are a bit too muted, the blue in particular gets lost against the white of the page. I get that they are pastel, but there’s a difference between pastel and washed out. Do I need tapes that look fabulous on the internet and just okay in real life? Hmm.

What bothered me most was that they were tacky as hell when I first unwrapped them, ew. I stacked them on a shelf and they stuck to each other and the shelf. Lovely. Is that normal? Who knows. I may not buy more to find out to be honest, they’re cheap but that may be their only redeeming factor.

The grid tape is consistently pretty in person and in photos, so that’s a win at least! Maybe I’ll love the others more when the phthalate-tastic tacky feel wears off.

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I would definitely reccomend buying from this store when they’re up and running again, the service was fantastic and everything arrived promptly and in perfect condition. I’d reccomend moving fast if you spot something you like though as items seem to sell out quite quickly.

Thanks for reading! (*´╰╯`๓)