As a on and off buyer of Crafts Beautiful Magazine over the past 2-3 years, I thought I'd write up an honest magazine review. Crafts Beautiful in my opinion is visually enticing with their free gifts galore but don't be deceived by the gifts as this may not be the magazine for you. As you are aware when you think of Crafts it generally covers every spectrum from sewing, paper craft, jewelry making and much more. This month I bought August edition, enticed by the decoupage kit and the envelope folder! How could I not, I am a woman of crafty needs! I love and inspire to dabble in all crafts, however, time does not allow me to, so as always I added the nice free gifts to my pile of "one day I will get time to paper craft". As many of you know as a little fabric shop owner, I do however, make time for Sewing, by teaching people all kinds of sewing notions, so magazines are very important and a valuable learning tool.
I personally think Crafts Beautiful is an excellent magazine for enthusiasts of paper craft, however, the tutorials on anything else in the magazine are few and far between. This magazine is predominantly card making/quiling and any other crafty wonders you can accomplish using paper or card, however, for me paper-craft really lacks a lot in terms of offering mixed quality crafts. I just cannot help but think that if Crafts beautiful wanted to be a paper making magazine, why didn't it do just that in the beginning, rather than portraying to many of us that it's a multi-craft magazine. I understand that there are always a few tutorials for Jewelery Making, Sewing Projects but they are on a number that is in no way equal to that of the paper projects. As a result Crafts Beautiful are missing a large target audience looking for new and unique projects that just haven't been done before and in my opinion Crafts Beautiful in a way are recycling the same material week in week out. Magazines can accomplish the balance of multi crafts, take Simply Homemade as an example. For me it's really balanced in terms of projects, it doesn't allow one craft to dominate another and whilst a magazine always has to be different from others, a Magazine should do what it says on the tin! If you are a paper enthusiast, Crafts Beautiful is for you, if you are a crafter of any other sort, find something more specific to you and if you want a decent multi magazine, try Simply Homemade and see if you can establish what makes a good magazine. I've emailed the Editor with the issues raised in this review, look forward to her response and maybe I will be buying Crafts Beautiful again in the future when perhaps they diversify abit better. This of course is my opinion, tell me what do you think?
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