I thought I'd share my haul of office supplies that I received recently. I ordered them maybe a month earlier than when they arrived. Maybe a little longer than that, but they shipped directly from China.
I'm not sure how I found this seller on Etsy. Maybe they were a suggestion on my home page when I logged in? But I was looking for a few things and this place had them at a reasonable cost. There were a couple of little glitches, but overall, it was a good shop with good-quality merchandise.
One of the things I really wanted were transparent dots to use with my planners. I thought I found a roll of them on Amazon, but when they arrived and I tried them out, I discovered they were not transparent. I can still use them, just not for what I was planning to use them for.
I ordered transparent dots from this Chinese store, ten rolls in assorted colors, and they were legitimately transparent. Yea!
This is the roll with various pinks. The two lighter ones were more grayish on the paper than pink, so I used the middle one and the one next to it. I haven't used the darkest pink yet but might in the future.
Here is a picture of a random page from my Everyday Carry (EDC) planner. I wanted the weekends to stand out for quick scheduling purposes. It ended up not being my best idea ever because putting any sticker in the same spot in a planner makes it bulky in that spot and difficult to write. Luckily, this was a weekly layout, so only 52 weekends. It's still bulky, but I can still write without it being an issue.
I learned my lesson, though. Going forward, I will use these dots in random spots throughout my planners and not in a dedicated location. That actually was the original plan. Just using them to highlight important things, so this shouldn't be a problem.
One of the glitches: A few of the rolls are duplicate colors. I thought I was getting 10 different colors on the roll. Not a big deal.
Dots 10/10. Exactly what I wanted and good quality.
I also found thin highlight strips with Post-it Note type adhesive, which allows me to move it around as I want. My plans were less specific here, but if I need to highlight something important, they're available.
Strip highlighters 8/10 because they are hard to get off the card. Not the seller's fault.
Another thing I really, really wanted was clips to hold my journal open. The more vellum and stickers I've put in here, the harder it is to keep it open when I'm writing in it. It's probably mostly the vellum's fault, but it's still annoying. The clips I ordered were $14.99 each on Amazon. For real. The exact same clips were available from this Chinese seller for around $9. Much more reasonable.
You can literally find these same two clips on Amazon. This is where one of the glitches happened, though. I wanted the cat clip, but the second clip I ordered had a planet on it. Instead, I got flowers. I would have preferred the planet that I originally chose, but this is fine.
10/10 The clips are heavy and great quality. Exactly what I wanted.
I also spotted some coffee clips in their store. These were an impulse purchase and are more useful as bookmarks since the clip doesn't have the strength of the cat and flower clips. I wouldn't trust this to hold open the planner for writing, but they're cute as page markers.
I wouldn't put them on a planner I intended to take out of my house because they might fall off, but for marking a page on a desktop planner, they'd work well, although they are bulky.
7/10 on the coffee clips. I like them, but they have limited usefulness.
There were a few more items I ordered: A pen with correction tape and a magnetic page clip (it's a knock off of the Oliclip. I'd recommend just waiting for the Oliclip to go on sale.) And this seller through in a pen and some page flags as gifts.
The tape correction pen is just as wide as the regular version and has the same issues the regular correction tape has, so it's the form rather than the function.
The Oliclip knock off didn't have the quality of the original clip and the magnet wasn't as strong. I'd rather pay extra and get the actual Oliclip. I bought collection of small ones and have some larger ones wishlisted for their next sale.
The shipping took a while, but I didn't need any of these things immediately. Buying from this shop was a surprisingly good experience.