Pipsticks

It’s no secret that I like stickers. I do a lot of journaling and letter writing and enjoy adding interesting decorations throughout these efforts. I saw an ad in my Instagram feed a while back for a shop that sells little else, and this shop just happened to be near where my family home in San Luis Obispo, California. Pipsticks is a sticker shop that collects many of their products into monthly subscription packs, so I ordered a couple of these, as well as a couple rolls of washi tape, and some postcards and greetings cards.

Somethings you notice immediately with Pipsticks is that they love holographic print. It covered their bubble mailer, their monthly pack envelopes, featured throughout the stickers themselves, and even the postcards and greetings cards. Even the wrapper to the washi tape had it. I was a bit overwhelmed by this, luckily the washi tape itself offered a break from the reflective silvery rainbow.

One of the things I also noticed in each of the sticker sets from Pipsticks is a penchant for tiny tiny tiny stickers, and sticker set that involve customer assembly. Their sticker packs come in versions for kids and for “pros”, but the pro packs too are definitely made for little hands, and intended to keep those little hands busy playing with the stickers rather than simply peeling them and sticking them where desired.

If I more regularly gave stickers to little kids, Pipsticks would be a great source. They don’t offer a very wide variety of stickers - nearly all look the same: rainbow reflective holographic cartoon shapes. But largely little kids don’t care or don’t notice when there is such repetition, and can play all day with the same sets.

For me, of course, it got overwhelming quite fast and I was glad when I had run through the supply. My middle-aged fat guy finders also found about half the stickers in the order too small to effectively manipulate from sticker sheet to final resting place.

If you have little ones under the age of 10 who like cute things and playing for hours with tiny manipulatives, Pipsticks will likely make them happy. I’ll keep an eye on this place and see if they branch out and put more variety in their catalogue in the future.