Crewspaint

Are you struggling to find the perfect birthday present for a dear friend? Because I have the answer — Crewspaint!
The story behind this is simple: I have a friend who loves traveling — I’m talking flag stickers plastered all over her suitcases kind of obsession. She spends her free time drawing up itineraries for future trips and makes it a point to record down every city and country she’s ever been to. She was sharing this list with me one day, and she unknowingly just gave me a huge clue of what I could get her for her birthday: a canvas she can hang up in her room with a design on it that incorporates the name of all the places she’s been to!
I played around with some applications online before coming up with a cool design — it was basically a word cloud of the names of all the cities and countries she has been to, with the cloud in the shape of an airplane. And then I did my research on which canvas company to use — there’s a lot more based in Hong Kong that I ever thought, but it was Crewspaint that I decided on because of its impressive website and affordable price. I chose the 12×12 canvas which would set me back only $ 158, much cheaper than the other websites I had looked at!
Granted, Crewspaint isn’t super efficient but that didn’t matter to me because my friend’s birthday was more than a month away, so I had plenty of time. They took a couple of days to acknowledge my order request via email, and they sent me the preview of the design ten days later. The preview basically just required them to crop the design into a square, so I don’t think it needed to have taken that long. A little less than two weeks later, my canvas was ready for collection!
The email actually stated for me to collect it within three weeks, but I collected it a little later than that and it wasn’t an issue — I called them up to make sure, and they said it was fine. I chose to go to Crewspaint to collect it — it’s located in Chai Wan, which is a little out of the way but wasn’t hard to find once I had gotten off the minibus from the station. If you’re not keen on going there to collect it, they offer delivery at a price.
Overall, I was happy with the service they provided. There was a bit of a lag in the beginning but like I said, it didn’t affect me because I didn’t need my canvas to be ready anytime soon (I put my order in in June — my friend’s birthday is in early August). If you need it done ASAP, I would suggest for you to put in your order early or use a different canvas company. I also noticed that the canvas wasn’t entirely dry — some of the black rubbed off on my finger when I touched it — but besides that, I’d recommend Crewspaint for anyone who wants to get a photo printed on canvas!