Full disclaimer: We were provided with Redbubble credit and obtained these items free of charge. We are also members of Redbubble’s affiliate program. However, the review above was done without bias and includes both the negative as well as the positive in order to provide our readers with the most accurate information possible.
We here at 3ChicGeeks were lucky enough to be selected to do a Redbubble Product Review through their affiliate program! Huzzah! While we were completely thrilled by this opportunity, we spent most of our time agonizing over what we were going to use our Redbubble credit on. After all, there are so many wonderfully geeky artists out there with awesome swag just begging to be bought.
After some time of debating whether to use the credit towards a few big items (t-shirts, Galaxy cases, posters) or obtain as much geek-tastic art as possible by choosing several smaller items, we went with the latter and ordered several postcards, stickers, and a few prints.
I was immediately impressed when the envelopes arrived (the stickers were shipped seperately). Redbubble ships their printed products in sturdy cardboard envelopes, meaning you don’t have to worry about any bending or creasing during shipment. Thank goodness!
Postcards
The postcards are standard 4″x6″, though they seemed a bit on the small side when I first opened them. They’re semi-gloss and the printing quality is great – none of the detail was lost from the original images. The best thing about the postcards is that if you buy them in bulk, you get a discount. If you’re anything like I am and have a hard time choosing what you want to buy because you want it all, postcards are an excellent way to go.
However, I did notice that the cutting didn’t seem to be done very carefully on several of the prints. A couple of the Supernatural postcards Freak Geek picked out suffered in the cutting process – bits of the design were cut off. The same happened to the Luna Lovegood post card for Unique Geek. The designs we chose that had a lot of blank space on the edges came out perfectly fine. I suppose this is always a possible downside to buying the less expensive option.
You can see on the right edge where a bit of the design was cut off.
The good news is, the postcards are easy to frame. Be careful when handling them, however, particularly if they have darker colors – any and all finger prints will show!
We got these designs:
“Tales from the Kripke” by Manny Peters (this is one of the designs that suffered in the cutting process)
“Knowledge Itself is Power” by kickingshoes
“Ravenclaw House Poster” by liquidsouldes
“221B Abbey Road” by ambear92
“Loki-God of Mischief” by redkyu
“Luna Lovegood Nouveau” by rubydencreative (another cutting casualty)
“Alice in Limbo” by istaria
“Vote Crowley (black)” by typelocked (the final casualty)
Stickers
Stickers. Stickers! Stickers are little bits of happiness, and in this case their little bits of geek-tastic happiness. Like the postcards, when you mass buy stickers from Redbubble, you get a discount. In this case, if you purchase six or more stickers, you’ll get 50% off all of them. Really, it’s a perfect excuse to cover every surface of your living space in stickers.
Redbubble’s stickers are fairly quality. They’re semi-gloss vinyl and thus far seem durable – I was able to move my Khalessi sticker around a few times before I was satisfied with its placement and didn’t experience any tearing or loss of stickiness. I almost want them to be a bit glossier, though I suppose that wouldn’t be conducive to Redbubble’s printing process.
My one big complaint about the stickers is that when you first open the package, they smell. A smelly plastic smell that lingers. I stuck my stickers in a corner of my room and let them air out for a few days and they still sort of smell.
I’d also like to see a change in how stickers are printed. All of them come on a white background, which presents a problem for some designs that feature white lettering that isn’t outlined in a darker color. There were a few different pieces of art I wanted to pick up in sticker form but ended up not being able to purchase for this reason.
You can find the stickers we nabbed below:
“Fire Nouveau” by Missy Pena
“The Fellowship of the Ring (black)” by AAA-Ace
“Let’s Take Selfies~” by reapersun
“Supernatural GTA” by KanaHyde
“Sammy Winchester” by sonicbowtie
“Ministry of Silly Hats” by scher
“Vincent Travels” by TerryLightfoot
“Chipped Cup” by BethXP
It was pretty impossible to get a clear picture of these prints because they are so shiny!
Prints
When Redbubble says “photographic prints”, they do mean photographic prints. These prints aren’t on cheesy gloss paper that looks like someone printed out at their home office. No, they’re on actual photo paper and of as high a quality as you would expect from a professional photography studio. This actually threw me off somewhat when I first opened the prints. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but a studio-quality print definitely wasn’t it.
In retrospect, poster prints may be closer to what most people are looking for, including myself. You can’t just throw these pictures up on your wall with some tacks. Well, you can, but it seems kind of wrong. In the future, I think I will be ordering prints that are matted so that they’ll be easier to frame if they come in an uncommon size like my “Loki the Trickster Art Nouveau” print by koroa. I have no idea where I’m going to find a 7.2″ x 12″ frame, and will probably end up having it matted so that I can fit it into a standard frame.
Also check out:
“Hell and Back” by Manny Peters
“BBC Sherlock Posters & Prints (Benedict Cumberbatch)” by curiousfashion
While there are some minor issues with some of the Redbubble products, overall I am satisfied with my order. The big thing is that the printing is high-quality, so none of the detail of the artwork is lost in the printing process. Plus, now our houses have a whole new slew of geeky art to grace the walls. This is a very good thing.