Made the mistake of purchasing from FWP. Never again.

I bought the following from FWP - A small dotted notebook with a case - A hardback sketchbook - A pen (the 90 USD one) and a set of converters. - Two bottles of ink - Bluegrass velvet and a cranberry coloured ink with gold shimmer in it that I can’t remember the name of. - A sampler / flight of three small bottles of ink.

The notebook and case are very cheap. The notebook is soft-backed and square, and the paper is quite thin. The paper also feathers badly regardless of what ink I’m using on it, and the case has a slot for chargers, but they’re impossible to get into the little slots. Came in a nice bag, I guess.

The sketchbook is … kind of pretty, but the paper is just okay and doesn’t hold ink well and makes a mess of any kind of marker sort, especially alcohol markers. The grain of the paper is acceptable but it mostly just feels awful to draw on. It also doesn’t lay flat for gods, love or money so I had to crack the binding to make it functional.

The pen is … awful. Overpriced junk. The converters don’t fit properly and drop out of the feed randomly. The screw cap doesn’t thread properly and the grip has sharp edges that dig into your fingers. 0/10, maddeningly uncomfortable to write with. Scratchy nib, skipping, just every hallmark of, “terrible pen.” Also the sound of posting the cap with the scraping on the aluminium is absolutely dreadful.

The shimmer ink has clogged the dickens out of my EDC Kaweco sport, and the bottle of bluegrass velvet leaked all over my desk even though it was capped and had the silicone gasket on the inside of the cap securely in place.

I was able to salvage some of the bluegrass velvet with paper towels and careful application of 99% isopropyl alcohol but it ruined my favourite desk mat and my hands are STILL green.

The ink chargers are useless. The colours represented on the website are nothing like what I got, and they’re so pale / pastel as to be illegible.

Took forever to ship, customer service absolutely lacking both in punctuality and helpfulness. Bought many of the items on clearance so I can’t return them.

Tl;dr: 1/10, an expensive mistake and rather large disappointment. All form, very little function - going to guess most of their money goes into marketing. Fool me once, shame on me I guess.

They also apparently use genAI and as someone who’s vehemently opposed to that tech, I will never order anything from them ever again.

EDIT: I’m talking about Ferris Wheel Press.