Secrets and Schemes Illumicrate Unboxing

Another quick recap that I’ve been getitng Illumicrate for far too long, I think their fourth box back when they were quarterly (my first book was Nevenight). And this box sadly is not living up to what the boxes used to be and their usually good boxes.

So let’s unbox starting from the theme card on the right and going clockwise:

• Theme card, it is more a booklet than anything.
• The collectible magnetic coin. Not interested, feel like a waste of part of the budget and I’d rather get something else.
• A patch. What is with book boxes and patches? I like the design but we’re not in the 80s or 90s and I have nothing to patch on or use it for. Give me stickers, bullet journal stuff, something more than patches!
• Amazing Star Wars pins. These are utterly gorgeous.
• Four Paths candle. The scent is very minimal and nobody seemed excited about it (a lot of my work colleagues are now invested in the unboxings and rate the items and choose and comment their favourites, this won no one).
• Blood Heir. It has bloody sprayed edges which I liked, intrigued on the book.
• A gorgeous mug, this is always a win item for me, specially with this type of super detailed designes and the type of mug it is. This one wins some of the points lost with the other items.
• A calendar with some typography quotes and some artowkr. The quality of the calendar paper leaves much to say, and the whole images per month were relatively meh (there’s a few good ones) so it had nothing exciting for me in it.

That was all. Which felt underwhelming. The mug and pins were the good items and the rest felt like they had dropped the quality and caring about curating items so I am hoping it picks up for this month (January). I am reluctant to stopping my subscription but if the quality keeps dropping, it’ll be hard to justify keeping it.