When our eldest daughter celebrates her birthday she usually gets a Php5000 or $100 book store shopping spree from her aunt who is abroad. She'd purchase books, pens, notebooks, more books, more pens and other school & art supplies. This time though, because we couldn't find the time to go shop at a National Book Store branch and she didn't have the patience to wait for weeks if we did order from the website, she opted to get just art supplies, nothing else, and it was up to me to find a local online art supply store that delivers fast.
We've been watching Facebook live videos of crafters for quite some time now, and fell in love with some of their projects. We plan to make our own versions of those, one specific craft had something to do with acrylic painting on canvas. My daughter had this in mind when she handed over the task of looking for an online art store to me. I was hunting down canvas and any other basic supplies for acrylic painting for beginners.
Went to Google, typed in the keywords and The Oil Paint Store popped out. I checked out their Facebook page first to read the reviews given by past clients to see if they were legit and how smooth online transactions went. Most of it was good, the only negative thing written about them was the unreasonable shipping cost. That done, I went straight to their website, browsed around and filled up my cart with the essentials. I ordered 4 pieces of 12x16' canvases, wooden palettes, a brush washer, acrylic paint tubes, 15 brushes (some were HUGE!), an acrylic matte medium and a bottle of oil. The delivery fee was Php310, which I admit is more than what I'm used to paying for shipping when I shop online. But given the fact that I had bulky canvases stretched on wooden frames that can be tricky to ship, and on top of that, we live in the province of Rizal too, I think it was fair. Just the convenience of not having to go out, imagine the wasted time on the road because of traffic, is worth the cost.
I placed my order, gave my shipping info and received an email confirmation. I got a call 2 days later that some of the brushes in my cart were out of stock. We agreed to replace 1 of the brushes with a fairly similar one, unfortunately we couldn't find one for the other. So, that was 16 down to 15 brushes, not since the rest of the items on my list were all available. I opted to pay thru BDO online banking, sent a screenshot of the money transfer to the store's official Viber number and was told that the goods will be delivered the next day. It was morning when it arrived, around 9AM.
Here's our art supply haul:
As you can see, the items were well-packaged and weren't damaged in
transit. The Maries Martol brushes were individually packed in plastic,
same with the palette knives, wooden boards and canvases. The brush
washer came in a box, I opened it right away to see how big it was.
These
brushes on the photo below are long, they're quite big! I didn't know
that art brushes came in these sizes haha. Now, I know!
Let's take a closer look at the stainless steel brush washer we got. It looks like it'll fit a lot of slim brushes, not the big ones though. I checked the store and they had a bigger one, saving up for that for sure. Also got a 100mL bottle of Berkeley Linseed Oil, which I have no idea what we're going to use it for haha.
Got 2 each of the Berkeley 12x16" and Conda canvases of the same size just to check out if there is any difference other than the price tag.
The 2 wooden palette boards aren't going to be much of use since we found out that's it's actually for oil and gouache painting haha! We'll use it in the future when she gets into oil paints. We're getting an acrylic peel off palette for the mean time, soon, watch out for that!
The Golden Matte Medium, we're still doing some research about. We actually got a bottle with another DIY project in mind that has nothing to do with acrylics paint and canvas art. Blogging about that soon, as well.
Liquitex Acrylic paint tubes in Black and Gold, looks promising. We have a specific painting in mind with these 2 as the stars.
The stainless steel palette knives are going to be used often for mixing colors and actually for some painting too!
Our daughter was giddy with delight when she received her orders and couldn't wait to use them, watch out for an update on her acrylic canvas painting projects! All the items were reasonably priced and of good quality. Customer service was also great. I love the payment options available and of course, the speedy delivery. Quite satisfied with our art supply shopping spree at The Oil Paint Store, I can see a lot of further transactions at their store with us in the future. Check them out on Facebook and on their website! We absolutely stretched our peso on this one!
Reference:
https://theoilpaintstore.com/
http://www.facebook.com/TOPSartsupplies/
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