Warning: don't waste 40 bucks on those fancy stencil packs for bullet journals

I got suckered into buying one of those big stencil sets off Amazon that claimed to have every shape you'd ever need for your weekly spreads. Paid like 38 dollars for a pack of 15 plastic sheets with circles, arrows, banners, you name it. Used the thing once and realized half the shapes are too small to even trace with a regular pen, and the other half are stuff like tiny stars that look awful no matter how careful you are. The plastic warped after a couple weeks of sitting in my desk drawer too. Now I just use a ruler and a compass I already had lying around from my kid's school supplies, works way better and cost zero extra. Anyone else get tricked by those kits or am I the only one who fell for it?

3 comments

3 Comments

taylorellis24d ago

Same pattern with those "ultimate" kitchen gadget sets. People buy the 12-piece chopper set and end up using just the regular knife and cutting board they already had. The stencil companies know what they're doing, they bank on that initial excitement of having all the options. Rulers and compasses have been doing the job for centuries without warping or needing special pens. Companies just repackage simple tools into fancy kits to charge ten times the price. A straight edge is a straight edge, whether it came in a plastic stencil pack for 40 bucks or fell out of your kid's geometry set.

eric_knight724d ago

Taylor hit it right on the head. I bought one of those big stencil sets a few years back for lettering. Ended up using maybe two of the templates, and the edges on the rest started chipping after a month. A good metal ruler and a compass from the office supply store work better anyway and cost maybe 10 bucks total. @taylorellis is dead on about companies just taking old tools and wrapping them in plastic to make them look new. You save money and get better results sticking with the basics.

young.nora24d agoMost Upvoted

I bought a calligraphy stencil set for twenty bucks and the letter O fell apart on the third use. The plastic got warped from just sitting in a drawer too. Meanwhile I still have my grandfathers old metal ruler that he used for drafting in the 60s. A simple T-square and a protractor from a dollar store will outlast any of those overpriced kits. The trick is to buy tools that are made of one solid piece of material, not glued together junk. Have you ever tried cutting your own stencils out of an old folder? Its cheap and you can customize them for exactly what you need.