At A Glance
Overall rating:
Price: $US34.95 (+$19.99 for extra letter set)
Customer Service:
Product Quality:
Product link: Felt letter board | Extra set of letters

What I liked

• Package presentation
• Product quality
• Double-sided – black and grey
• Letters don’t fall out
• A range of mounting options

What I didn’t

• Not enough compartments in letter storage box for utility pieces e.g. emojis, and extra letters
• No usage tips

Intro

Felt letter boards are a flexible and attractive way to display all sorts of messages around the home or workplace.  Be it a menu, a poignant quote or a quick message of love, if you get a good one you’ll find they’re easy to use and a lot of fun!  I sometimes sell coffee and cakes at fairs, so for me it’ll be a way to spruce up our stall a bit!

I chose the NaturaHappy product from Amazon. It was pricier than some of the alternatives, but I was after a good quality unit and a lot of the cheaper ones seemed to be flimsily assembled. I also bought the extra set of letters – they have two to choose from, the one I bought had things like Cake, Coffee, Tea etc which were perfect for our use.

After my order I received two separate emails from the seller thanking me for my purchase and ensuring I was happy with everything. I daresay it’s an automated thing, but it was a nice touch and gave me an easy way to get directly in touch with the seller if there were any problems. This was a good start to my experience.

Contents

The $34.95 package includes:

• Felt letter board
• Mounting base
• String and hooks for wall-mounting
• Serrated bracket for wall-mounting
• Letter case
• 601 white plastic alphanumeric letters, emojis and icons

Unboxing

The box was quite large but extremely attractive and well done – it was gloss white cardboard with gift-wrapping printed on it, so would make a perfect gift.  Straight up you could tell this wasn’t a budget kit.

Inside it was very attractive too – it was obvious the seller has gone to a lot of effort to ensure their customers get this is a top-tier experience. The package was neatly tied up with a ‘thank you’ note at the front from the seller.

The quality of the board was amazing!  The fit and finish was top-notch American Oak with a satin finish.  Plus it’s double-sided – one side is black felt, the other is grey.  While I preferred the black there would be some decors where the grey would work better.

Use

It’s easy to push the letters into place.  This version works with little pegs of plastic poking out the back of each letter.  These then push into grooves running horizontally along the letter board.  Unlike some others I’ve looked at, these letters stay solidly put.  The pegs are large enough to hold on firmly and there is evidently enough pressure within the board to get a good grip.  You won’t have trouble with these letters dropping out!

Once you’ve got your message written you can display it in a few ways.  It can rest in the holder it comes with which is ideal for counter-top mounting.  Alternatively if you want it to be wall-mounted it comes with a serrated screw hanger for a flush finish, as well as a string for hanging below a hook.  These options are obviously thoughtfully considered and very effective.

We spent quite some time taking all the letters off.  To start with I was twisting them away from their mounting but quickly realised this left long dags of plastic attached to the letters. It was much quicker to get a set of wire cutters and snip them off.  I guess a pair of scissors may work, or a pair of nail clippers at a pinch.

Having gotten some letters detached, the storage box then came into play to store them away.  Again the product quality of NaturaHappy shows up here – the main hinges are proper moulded pin hinges, not thin plastic that’s designed to flex and eventually break. It would have been nice if the clips to hold the lid closed were made the same way.

The box has 36 compartments, some of which can be combined to make longer spaces if desired.  This was adequate, but after removing some of the 601 included letters and other characters I quickly felt it would have been nice to have more room.  On the surface of it, 36 compartments is barely adequate – it’s the 26 letters of the alphabet plus the 10 numeric digits, and that’s before you touch the emojis, punctuation, dollar / euro / yen signs, flowers, hearts, thumbs up, arrows etc.  I ended up saving three compartments; O and 0 seemed identical, as did 6 and 9 so these each got one compartments, and I combined Q and Z.  This gave me a bit of room for punctuation and so on.  If you get an extra letter set you can forget about storing any of those in the storage box, and unfortunately those sets don’t include their own storage box.  Instead, you get a few white cotton bags which are adequate but not ideal – and if these are to be chosen I think it would have been better if these bags had been any color other than white, as it’s hard to pick the identity of the white letters once they’re inside.

And I guess this brings me to another slightly odd observation – while product instructions per se probably aren’t necessary, it could have been helpful to include some tips on getting the most out of the product, e.g. the best way to detach the letters upfront, how to mount and remove the letters, the purpose of the nice white cotton bags (presumably storage of extra letters), and, given my little difficulty with the 36 compartment tray, some guidance on how to organise the different letters for the maximum efficiency. That said, it didn’t take me long to work these things out myself, so perhaps I’m being picky here; and if you’ve read this far you’ll know how to deal with it yourself by now!

Conclusion

Overall this is an extremely well-built product.  Its outstanding presentation, the attention to detail throughout and the quality of the product are its key features, as well as being just a really nice way to display a message.

The lack of documentation and letter storage were small issues, but I’ve been able to work around all of these and they do nothing to detract from what is fundamentally an extremely well-made and functional product.

Highly recommended!