AliExpress

I buy quite a lot of crafting things (paper, felt, pens, paint etc) and up until now I have largely been getting them from Amazon (yes – I know I should shop locally but some of this stuff is quite specialized and I would have to go into Edinburgh for it).

The other day I came across AliExpress – who I had only thought of in the context of cheap clothes, toys and dodgy electronics.  I did not realize they sold craft supplies – and in fact they have three big advantages over Amazon.

a) They ship things in plastic wrapping – as little as possible in order to save shipping costs.  This is as against massive cardboard boxes – they may be great for delicate things but Amazon put far too much on and use boxes which are far too big for their contents.

b) They have none of this foolish age verification crap for things like blades for craft knives.  Amazon solemnly make me sign for these even though the blades are about 2cm long.

c) They charge less than half the price for exactly the same thing.  Like literally the same thing only in a box (which I don’t want).

The only drawback (for this kind of thing – not necessarily for electronics where in general you do not want to burn your house down), is that things take a minimum of 3 to 4 days, and for things actually coming from China, up to 3 weeks.

My stuff arrived in 8 days.

The round things are ceramic disks for making Christmas ornaments and were less than 25% of Amazon’s price.  Also notice the 100 craft knife blades I bought.  I think I will have to go out and terrorize the neighbourhood with them.