Artustry Art Watercolor Pencils

These watercolor pencils come with 48 pencils all wrapped up in a very nice carrying and storage case. The case is made of a canvas type material that wraps up and snaps closed with a button snap.

The pencils come pre-sharpened and includes a sharpener for when you need one. It also comes with an eraser and a really nice watercolor brush. You can use these pencils dry just like any other colored pencil but the real show comes from when you add water to them! You can dip the tips in water or color and then add water with the supplied brush, but either way the colors melt and blend so beautifully!

The range of colors you get with this set is fantastic! The colors have a nice range so you have a great selection to make your art blend well. They also look like they’re made to last! I used these for quite a while and it looks as if they’ve never been touched! The colors are thick and aren’t prone to breaking so you aren’t constantly sharpening only to find the tip falls out. This set looks and feels really well made and expensive. Whether you’re a seasoned artist or a beginner who likes to color like me, you’ll appreciate the effort put into making this product a great one! #ArtustryArt You can learn more about them here: https://www.facebook.com/artustry/

You can get your own on Amazon here : http://www.amazon.com/Colored-Art-Pencils-Pre-sharpened-Watercolor/dp/B01D0TO8UU/ref=sr_1_1?m=A3UK9EBAWOT3NJ&s=merchant-items&ie=UTF8&qid=1462850062&sr=1-1&keywords=watercolor+pencils

I received this product for free or discount for my honest opinion. All opinions are true and my own.

Mondly Language Learning App

***Before I go on about my review let me state that my review is based on the Japanese language since that is what I’m wanting to learn but this app can be used for almost ANY language that you want to learn. Also with Premium you can switch back and forth between languages and also add other family members as well.***

As many of you know, I’m obsessed with all things Japanese and I would love to learn how to speak the beautiful language. I’ve tried several different tools, including Rosetta Stone, without a whole lot of success. Don’t get me wrong, the other programs help and they do teach you. However, they are really difficult and it makes it very easy to get burned out.. It gets so complicated that you get frustrated with having to do a lesson. Let me give an example: They will show you a picture of a girl eating in a park on a bench. Then they will show you the Japanese word you are supposed to learn. It doesn’t tell you what the word means though and never does! Does the word mean girl? Food? Lunch? The park?! You’re so confused you google the word only to find out it means “Spring Time”… How was I supposed to get “Spring time” out of that if it didn’t tell me in my language as well so I would know what I’m looking at!? Well that’s what makes this app so great! It shows the Japanese word as well as the English one so you aren’t confused. There are so many features that are helpful and keeps the lessons from being frustrating! Let’s start at the top.

The Mondly app is free to download and it has several lessons and daily lessons that you can do as a free user. If you want to really delve into the learning process though you should really consider going premium. It is very reasonably priced and it offers so much in the way of learning every day things in the language.  The home screen is set up so you can see your course outlined very easily and take things step by step. They’re placed in sections such as “Hello” and “Family”, “Romance” and “Travel”. That way you get a general idea of what this section will be covering.

There are “Daily Lessons” which give you the ability to study a short time (around 10-15 minutes to complete) every day so that you don’t get burned out and you’ll have time to study a little each day even if you’re super busy. You can set a notification for different times of the day to remind you if you’re forgetful like me. It’s a very useful function.

When you get into the lessons, they provide several different methods of learning so that you aren’t just seeing one method the whole time and end up getting bored with it. Sometimes you see pictures and select the correct one for the word they’re providing.

Another neat aspect to this is that you can change between reading everything in “Romanji” or in Kanji. So you can sort of sound out the words or look at the Japanese characters if you are learning to write the language as well as speak it!

In other parts of the lesson you will be given an English sentence and need to choose the appropriate Japanese counterparts to make the sentence.

Other times you will be given the Japanese sentence and asked to type out the English words to match.

There are sections where you will be given the Japanese sentence and use your microphone to say the sentence back correctly.

And the classic method of giving an Japanese sentence and using multiple choice to pick the correct English translation and vice versa.

This app does a great job of ensuring that you not only remember the Japanese words but understand WHY you’re using them. That to me is the most important part of trying to learn this language. I want to know why I am using these words and how they make up the sentence. You can select parts of the sentence and see why those particular words are used and the other forms of the word. This app has greatly enhanced my understanding and I think it’s a really great tool for anyone who is trying to learn a new language! You really need to give it a try! It’s free so what are you waiting for!

The app can be downloaded at the following links: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/learn-english-spanish-french/id987873536?mt=8
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atistudios.mondly.languages&hl=en

I was given the premium version of this app for free for my honest opinion about the app. All opinions are true and my own. I receive no compensations other than the product for my reviews and my reviews are honest.