Crafted By Colette

Over recent months I’ve been getting a little frustrated with my alcohol markers. My favourite colours of my Ohuhu markers have been running out. And as much as I love them, Ohuhu doesn’t do refills or sell individual markers. And even though I have quite a collection now, I was beginning to find that I didn’t have enough desaturated shades.

So when I came into some money in August, I got myself some new markers. And now I can do a marker haul post.

I got a few different types of markers, but I’m not going to do a comparison or review or anything, unless people wanted one.

One of the colours I only had a few of was turquoise/teal, so when I saw this set I decided it was a good chance to try Spectrum Noir.

I had ordered these from AliExpress way back in July, before I could afford a marker haul, but they arrived around the same time as the others. With all the robots I’ve been doing lately my lighter greys have been running out.

One of my favourite stores here in the UK is The Works. I get quite a lot of my art and craft supplies from there. They’ve been selling their own brand of markers, CMYK, for a while now – they do smaller packs with a colour theme, but this one had all the colours. And we all know I love all the colours. Plus, this set came in a cool box.

As I said at the start of the post, I’ve been getting frustrated with my markers. The cheaper ones are great. They work okay. But when they run out, there’s no replacement option. The Copics are expensive, but when they run out there’s the option of the Various Ink refill – which refills a marker a couple of times. Unfortunately, the cheaper markers are an option because they’re cheaper. I can buy a set of 36 Copic Ciaos for £100+, or I can buy a set of 60 Ohuhus for £40. Yes, in the long run the Copics are cheaper, but it’s having the money in the first place.

The only option is to get them gradually. And Copics are a brand that you can buy individual markers of. I think it works out every so slightly more expensive, but £3.25 a week is a lot less of a burden on a budget than £100. So as part of my marker haul I went onto Cult Pens and got myself Copics.

I’m collecting the Ciaos because that’s what I was gifted a 12 set of a couple of years ago. But the Ciaos are also cheaper. They hold less ink, and there’s only 180 colours in the range rather than the full Copic range of 358 colours, but they’re still pretty awesome. I did decide that I wanted to try out the Copic Sketch and the original Copic though.

By this point I realised that I was nearly at the stage where I had at least one of each of the bigger brands – I already have some Touch markers, some Promarkers and a Brushmarkers. I was missing a Prismacolor though – so I went looking online. They’re a mainly American brand and therefore hard to get here in the UK. The only feasible option I could find was an independent eBay seller who was selling two of the same colour for a £2.50. When they turned up there was an extra marker too, in a different shade.

So… marker haul!

And of course I did all the swatching. I love to swatch.