Reviewed by
Mary
Japanese stationery combines the best of cute with functional and high quality! This month’s Cute Cravings box from ZenPop leans into the cute factor with some playful items and some tasty-looking ones too!
The booklet in the box gives you a little fun taste of Japanese culture, often relating to the theme. ZenPop do several different boxes as well as stationery, including snacks, ramen, and anime. There’s a QR code on the back to scan, which takes you to themes with the box contents. These can be very useful, because while some items are self-explanatory, it’s very useful to know if there’s a particular way to use an item, as every single thing is for the Japanese market.
Puni Ketsu Fusen from SunStar, Niko Ichi Tape Nori YURUWAN Nihiki from Kamio Japan, Frixion Stamp Box from PILOT
I couldn’t imagine wheat this squishy thing was at first – a toy perhaps, or one of those squeezy stress things? No, it’s a set of animal butt sticky notes! The cover of the pad is indeed a squashy little panda butt, and the sticky notes inside are the same shape. Both cute and hilarious!
Glue tapes are incredibly useful. This tiny and adorable glue tape dispenser is perfect to carry around in a pencil case, for sticking in notes or pictures, and for scrapbooking too. I use glue tape a lot but I’ve never seen any as cute as this!
The Frixon stamps from Pilot are really useful. They’re tiny stamps and actually come in lots of different designs, all little and cute, but this one is the most practical one I’ve seen. It’s a little square, basically a checkbox, and it’s perfect for to-do lists and journalling. Even better, it’s actually erasable using the soft end of the step. I adore making lists and this will definitely make them look a lot nicer in my journal!
SANDWICH NOTE from Iroha publishing, Magic Color Marker from Qlia, Design Paper Kudamono Marche from Kyowa Shikou
Notebooks ranging from elegant to cute are a staple of Zenpop Stationery. This one is all about the fun, designed as a multilayered sandwich with the covers as bread, and separate sections inside divided by the various fillings! It’s the perfect multipart notebook for school or journalling, and the ring bound spine means it can be opened fully and kept flat.
The colour change marker is another fun item. The main marker colour is as shown, but then there’s a white end that changes it completely! You can get really goof effects by colouring a block and then drawing over it to make a pattern or picture in the new colour.
I love scrapbooking, and I collect lots of wonderful papers for patterns and backgrounds to decorate my pages. This pack of paper is in four different fruit-themed designs, perfect for a summer page theme, eating out, or you could use it to decorate greeting cards and journals too. This is a brilliant addition to my paper collection!
POP-UP Notemark from OCT, Free Cut Sticker from LAB CLIP, Fusenshi Journal Habit Colorful pattern from midori
This pop-up bookmark flummoxed me a little bit, but I managed to find instructions online as to how to use it! Basically you stick it into the front and back pages of a book, fold down the middle inside the book, place the fold where you want to keep your place, and then when you open the book the face pops up! It’s a little silly but it’s a lot of fun.
This sheet of washi strips are perfect for decorating a notebook or especially a journal. You can write on them, and they’re perforated to make the size you like without cutting. The spotty pattern is really cute, and I think these will work really well for bordering the top of my next month’s journal page.
The habit tracker sticky notes are one of the most brilliant items I’ve seen yet! It’s really simple but incredibly useful. I’m a big fan of habit tracking, it’s a great way to keep yourself on track, if there’s something you especially want to do – or not! – a habit tracker is a great way of doing it. The sticky back means you can move it from week to week in your diary. There are ten of three different designs in each pack, and there’s space to write in exactly what you want to track. They’re small enough so you don’t need a lot of space in your journal, and they’ll definitely keep you honest in your goals!
