I feel that I should offer an explanation - I contact companies in batches as I am often turned down (or ignored completely). I got a bit of a shock when, instead of having two companies out of ten respond and send samples for me to review for you all, about nine responded, which is how you end up with situations like this:
Don't worry, I'm not reviewing those samples individually! I wouldn't put you through over thirty consecutive ink reviews. You'll see all those colours in bunches of ten over about three posts. There was another pile of stationery too, and I managed to catch a cold just when I was catching up on the backlog, which put me behind... again. Maybe other people can, but I just can't write a good review with a headache and a sore throat, and I refuse to publish any writing that isn't up to my usual standard, because ultimately the only reason why I blog is because I want my readers to enjoy my writing.
I recovered fully a few weeks ago and now I've almost caught up with all the reviews I need to publish. This means that I should be able to get back to writing normal posts again soon!
I will still, of course, publish reviews. It's part of the blog and always will be, but I don't want KraftyCats to be purely reviews, because it wouldn't be any fun! Constant product analysis gets boring for me and you, and I want to have time to ramble on at length about random stationery subjects.
Such as my hatred of tiny ink vials. You may have noticed that I have a lot of those. In a perfect world, all ink samples for reviewers would come in adorable little glass bottles like the Anderillium Inks samples, but I know that this isn't cost-effective for small businesses sending samples half way around the world. Bottles are weighty and bulky, and shipping costs aren't kind.
I always ask companies to fill the vials full to leave room for mishaps (I learnt a lesson from the shimmer worm in the Columbia Blue ink review), but even when they are full, the annoying little things have a very small surface area and are very easily knocked over. So I decided to find a solution.
You can buy special holders for ink vials, but I needed a quick and easy solution. Somebody has probably done this before, but I haven't seen it suggested anywhere, so I'm letting you know about it in case you also need to deal with fiddly vials!
All you need is a glass jar and rice (sand would probably work too). Pour the rice into the jar:
Then simply push the vial into the rice, and it won't be able to tip over unless you knock over the weighted jar! I can fit two in this one.
With the vials secured, filling is much easier! As an added bonus, if any ink drips off a nib the rice will absorb it, preventing an inky desk.
I hope that this trick helps you! It us certainly going to be useful for me for my future reviews.
I can't wait to get back to writing my normal posts - until then, enjoy reading about some brilliant products!