Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Crafts and Things ( my review)


Crafts 'n Things is the magazine that recently merged with the Rubber Stamper and Paper Made Easy. Unfortunately for me, I had just subscribed to the Rubber Stamper in August or September. Once I quit the Design Team and stopped sending in cards, I stopped receiving free copies of the Rubber Stamper-- go figure!
While I do like Crafts 'n Things, it isn't a replacement for TRS. This issue has, however, improved over my last copy of Crafts 'n things from October of 2006. I'm pretty sure that was one of the first issues. I don't know the history or how long it's been around for sure but improvement is always good right?
What I like...
Believe it or not, in my quest to scale down on the number of subscriptions I have I kinda wished for one magazine that does a lot of different crafts. When Crafts became Paper Crafts, they left a void in the world of crafting magazines. I looked at GiftMaker as one possibility, but I haven't subscribed to it yet. This issue has beading, crochet, and paper crafts among it's projects. In my opinion the projects were worthy of a second look. I think it even inspired me to think about crochetting again. The photography is beautiful. I like big beautiful photographs. I'm a visual learner so pictures are important to me. The directions were precise and gave just enough information without tedious details.

There were over 75 quality stamping projects and a lot of them were from familiar names. (Familiar from other magazines including The Rubber Stamper and blogs).

In time, I do hope they do something with all that talent from the Rubber Stamper's Design team. It would be a shame to ignore all the experience and talent that those ladies have. I was one of the original 6 Design Team members. and During the time I was on the team, I worked with Chris Chatten and two editors. All of them were fabulous. Jill Wentz took the Design team under her wing when she came on board. She made a point to really organize and fine tune it. She also added a few more ladies. I miss being on that team. I had to make a tough decision last fall to quit because I was planning to have major surgery and then work full time for the first time in 18 years. Because of all that, I also shut my website down last January. Well as you know, none of that happened. Instead, I started this blog, we relocated, and I started working at Michaels again. What a difference a year makes. But enough about me.

Crafts 'n Things is available at Michaels and Wal-mart among many places. Browse thru it or pick up a copy the next time you are out and let me know what you think.

2 comments:

Karen Lindsay said...

I appreciate your review and agree. I used to subscribe to "Crafts and Things" years ago when I was really into crafting of all types. I loved "Rubber Stamper" just the way it was. Not to mention, a friend and teacher of mine, Julie Koerber, was one of the contributors. I know we will miss "Rubber Stamper." Don't think I will subscribe to "Crafts & Things"...

Anonymous said...

I miss TRS! I am not impressed with Crafts and Things and think I'll try to cancel my subscription - just way too much "other" stuff I'm not into. Please tell those ladies to make another stamping mag!!