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Upcrate Monthly Mystery Art Supplies Box Review
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May 3, 2024
Upcrate Monthly Mystery Art Supplies Box Review Use code Carter15 to get 15% off your first order. Read the full article at: https://www.carterart.art/article/upcrate-monthly-mystery-art-supplies-box-review Read about gouache: https://www.carterart.art/article/is-gouache-more-like-watercolour-or-acrylics Social Media Links: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamescarter.art/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JamesCarter.Art Website: https://www.jamescarterart.com/ James Carter Art
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0:00
Hello everyone and welcome to my review video about Upgr8. Upgr8 are a monthly subscription
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service company that send out a box of art supplies to you every month for a very reasonable
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price. I really liked this brand and everything they stood for, building up artist reputations
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and allowing artists to experiment and trial new media and mediums. I found it a little
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bit hard to open the box because it was very well secured which I actually really liked
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Upon opening the box however I discovered that the materials themselves were in a slightly
0:33
damaged green wrapper which was a little bit unfortunate but all the materials were still
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in great contact and still super high quality. So I've written an entire article about Upgr8
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and the company, everything they do and what they offer. I've also got a code for you to
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use which is James15 where you can get 15% off your first monthly subscription of their
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art box supplies. So within the box we received a magazine and a few other things which I'll
1:05
get to a little later but for now let's have a look at the items themselves. We received
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a really nice fineliner which I believe is 0.1 or 0.2 and that one is really, really
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nice. They all feel very high quality. We also received a paintbrush which is really
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nice and I half expected some of the bristles to fall out but it had a really nice point
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to it and a really nice edge. So that was really, really nice. I half expected some
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of these to be a little crankled up but I also received some gouache paint which is
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something that I never have used before and I thought it would be a great opportunity
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to try out gouache paint. We received about four different gouache paints. I was surprised
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we didn't receive any black but that was easy enough to make use for. We received blue
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skin, white and red which could also be magenta but it depends. And then we also received
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this glue stick which was one of the hardest things I've ever had to open and even my knife
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struggled with it a little bit. But I was surprised with the glue stick because I didn't
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quite know what it was for but I eventually found that I'd missed out one of the art supplies
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which is transfer foil. Which I don't actually use the glue stick or transfer foil in this
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video because I just didn't think that it would... I didn't get around to using it basically
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But yeah, after managing to finally open the glue stick packet I realised that the glue
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stick itself had even more plastic around the top of it which was a little bit annoying
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But yes, I really enjoy Upcrate and everything they do and the subscription services is actually
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reasonably reasonably priced so if you're interested in being able to trial new media
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every month I would actually suggest maybe trying them out a little bit and you can also
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use the code to get 15% off to try them. So once we finally got all of that plastic
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off of the glue stick it was just a squeezy glue tube thing. That was it. But yeah. I
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also decided that I'd try and open the packet how it was meant to be designed because I
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was a little bit disappointed that the packaging had been damaged slightly but I mean it wasn't..
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I'm sure it wasn't any fault of Upcrate themselves and I'm sure not every packet comes like this
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but from what you can see now that's how it would have been opened which would have been
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lovely because for an art supplies delivery company I truly believe that the experience
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of opening up the package for the first time is a massive part of it all and we also received
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this magazine which I could quite happily sit down and flip through the magazine for
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a while and also you can see the monthly battle thing is a monthly thing that Upcrate
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do where you can create a piece of art using the materials they've given you from that
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month inspired by the topic they gave you. So this month's topic was mysterious mind
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and I'll be creating a piece of artwork using the materials a little later on which I think
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you'd really enjoy and so that you can actually enter with a hashtag on Instagram and you
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can also win prizes from that as well. We also received this little letter which I was..
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I didn't quite expect anything like this and all that came within it was a whole load of
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stickers. I'm not entirely sure what the stickers are used for, they might just be something
4:48
fun to mess around with or just that little extra thing that Upcrate like to offer you
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but as you can also see in the box we also received that transfer foil which at first
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I wasn't quite entirely too sure what it was, what to do with it or how to use it because
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I haven't used it before but within the magazine themselves they actually talk about how to
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use it, what you can do with it and all the little bits and bobs you can create with it
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It was a little hard to get out of the box. So yeah that's the transfer foil which if
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you're unfamiliar with how to use transfer foil, there's loads of stuff on YouTube but
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all you do is you put a little bit of glue down and you rub it and it transfers over
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We also received three sheets of paper which I was really happy with. Unfortunately the
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corners were ever so slightly damaged but nothing significant whatsoever, it was just
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noticeable to me. They are very, very high quality sheets of paper and the tooth on them
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is absolutely lovely which will also hold the gouache paint really, really well. We
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also received this which I'm not entirely too sure what it was, I think it was just
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a sheet to show the Instagram page of the Art Fusion company. So let's just pack all
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that up and then these are the materials I'm going to be using which was just the gouache
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paint and the pen. I really, really wanted to use the pen because I do have some experience
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with fineliners and penmanship and I've also used dip pens and everything like that. So
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I thought this would be a really nice experience to try and use gouache paint with the pen
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I'm very confident with using a pen these days but gouache paint is something I've not
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tried before so I thought it would be absolutely really fun to try, see what it was like really
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And I know gouache paint is halfway between acrylic and watercolour so it's not fully
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opaque but it's not fully transparent. I've written an entire article on gouache paint
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which I'll put a link to in the description as well for you which you might find a little interesting. So this was inspired by that, by the little monthly challenge of Mysterious
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Mind. Unfortunately I didn't have any ideas about it or anything and this is actually
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a piece of artwork that I've been wanting to do for a little while and this was just a great excuse for me to just do it with. Unfortunately it's not my own original artwork
7:10
it is me drawing this now but the artwork itself was actually part of an article from
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the New York Times. Unfortunately I don't know who the original artist was. If you do
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know them I will give them full credit because this is not my original artwork, I just was
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inspired by it and really loved everything they did with it. So using the pen I found
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it really really nice, it has one of the best grips I've found. It does look a little cheap
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on first hand but almost the moment you pick it up you can just feel the high quality of
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the nib and the holding and the grip. It is really really nice to have this lovely flat
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edge for you to be able to use and I don't know quite what it is but it just feels like
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absolutely amazing. As a fineliner this might be my new favourite fineliner. But yeah, from
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there I decided to learn how to use the gouache paint which I just on the side I just squeezed
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out all the paints, mixed them to make some purple and then I just painted away. I did
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find that the brush was really really nice and none of the bristles fell out which I
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was half expecting a bristle or two to fall out as for some of the cheaper paintbrushes
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I've bought in the past but this one stood up really well and all the gouache paint worked
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really well I think. I mean I've not used it before so I think that this was a really
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good experience to trial it and that's what I love so much about this upgrade company
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is that they allow you to trial out new art media materials and medium every month whereas
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usually when I first started drawing painting I was very much like this is what I want to
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try I'm going to stick within this limit but with this company I think it's really really
9:00
nice to be able to try things that they give you rather than you going I'm going to try
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this I'll try that out next month you know but with this company it's really nice because
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you don't know what you're going to expect every month they change the what's included
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within the packaging and they also the monthly challenge also changes as well but I found
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that using the paints themselves was really nice you know you could instantly tell they
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were really high quality and then after putting them down and letting it dry for a few minutes
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I decided to test out the pen again by going over the paints with it because I thought
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oh maybe it might not might not work as well but surprisingly it worked perfectly also
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I don't know if I mentioned but I'm also every bit of material in here I'm using is from
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the upgrade and it's even the paper as well I found that was really really nice quality
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as I said the corners were ever so slightly damaged but nothing too noticeable but the
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tooth on the paper and the quality of it it's nice thick paper so it holds itself in
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a good battle of the water for the gouache paint but yeah I do hope you enjoyed this
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review and if you want to you can read the full entire article that I've written on everything
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to do with upgrade everything good everything bad everything that you could ask for from
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an upgrade review and I'll leave a link to that in the description below thank you very
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much for watching I'll see you next time. Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supply needs
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