Second On The Second – Visit to Cass Art Glasgow & Polychromos (2018)

Hello friends!

October was a busy month for me, so I hope to be taking it a bit slower this month, but as we get closer to the dreaded C word, everything seems to speed up, don’t you think?  Anyway, as I was thinking about gifts, I thought about this great gift that I gave myself a few years ago and was lucky to get it at a bargain price!  Some background – Cass Art is chain of art supply shops, there are several in London and then a few outside London, including one in Glasgow, and they have an online shop too.

Second on the Second

And that brings me to the reason for today’s post.  Bleubeard and Elizabeth’s Second on the Second Challenge asks that you bring back a post that you’re proud of or an old one that was shared before anyone knew of your blog.  I chose this post as I was looking through posts from previous Novembers and this one stood out since it was a visit to an actual art shop, something that I haven’t done for a while now and I picked up a real bargain that I have never regretted buying.  You can read the original post from 17th November 2018 here or just look below for the Second on the Second post.

I couldn’t resist squeezing in a quick pre-Christmas trip to Glasgow, especially since one of my favourite shops – Cass Art in Glasgow  – sent me an email announcing a one-day 20% off sale. I tried not to go crazy especially because of the money situation and Christmas but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to just take a look and see if I could cross anything off my wishlist.

A one-day sale with 20% off?  I had to go! I knew I needed some watercolour paper and I like their own branded paper, so I thought it was worth the trip to get it cheaper.

But…. I also had a few other possibilities on my list depending on if they had them in stock as I had been looking stuff up in their online shop yesterday, however they often have different products in the actual shops so there was no guarantee that what I was looking at online would be in the actual shop when I got there.

So on my list as a maybe was the Faber Castell Polychromos pencils – you know the ones?

I was looking at the prices online and they were as follows:

set of 36 – retail price £74.50, their price £54.95, 20% off price £43.95
set of 60 – retail price £123.50, their price £95.00, 20% off price £76.00

I know they also price match with amazon so I checked the price of the 36 pencil set and amazon had it for £42.95 so I was thinking about it.  I always think with these things that you should buy the biggest set you can afford, because if you buy one of the smaller sets you will quickly realise that you need more colours. Emphasis here is on “afford” and I decided I could maybe just afford the 36 pencil set.

So off I went up to Glasgow for my watercolour paper and to check out the pencil situation.

However, when I got there, they only had the single pencils for sale, and when I asked about sets, the guy said he would check in the back, then he came back and said they only had the really big box of 120 pencils! £230.00 retail – eek!  They had it for £169.00 and then there would be 20% off that price. I said I still couldn’t justify paying that much so he went away to see if they could do any better on price for me, and I said I would check amazon prices. So amazon had it for £114.49 and I showed it to him on my phone and he said they would price match and I said ok!!!!!!!!!!!!

But when I got to the checkout, they then took the 20% off THAT price, plus I had a £10 voucher, so I ended up paying £83.59 for the set of 120 Polychromos that retails at £230.00 lol. That’s about £0.69 per pencil. They are usually about £2.00 each. I got about 60% off the price lol.  And really a lot of places sell the 60 pencil set for more than I paid for this, so I don’t regret it.

So in the end I really only bought one extra (big) thing (plus the paper), but it was such a great bargain. I practically ran out the shop before they changed their minds and took them back hahaha

I only had the white Polychromos before today, and I used that a lot for mixed media as it writes on practically anything, and you can also mix them with baby oil and use them for painting.  They are good for left handers because they do not smudge and that can be a real problem as you are dragging your hand across your work as you write or colour.  I could never decide between the Prisma ones and the Polychromos as both get really good reviews but this was hard to pass up today so I grabbed them.  The colours are absolutely beautiful. I noticed in the smaller sets that there were hardly any purples, but this large set has a lot of them. Just take a minute and admire the beauty of all that colour!

I have to say it was very festive in the shop, quite a lot of customers and they had mince pies and chocolates etc and the staff were dressed up. It was very nice.

oh and when I got home, my Simon Says Stamp order (one of them) was waiting for me in the hall!

Challenges

Second on the Second