apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

:(

That is all.

Actually, I was just about to contact them to cancel my subscription. I hadn't wanted the second year, but they put me on autosubscribe, so it showed up anyway.

I'm very crafty, but there was nothing I felt compelled to make in the two years I got it. It fell into the valley between being a magazine about the crafty world and being a mag that was for people who did crafty stuff and wanted to learn more.

Keeping both newbies and skilled folks happy is hard enough when you are just a single craft mag, trying to take in the whole world is/was just too much.

Marie Claire Idees has a much better take (hope they are doing OK). They have gorgeous pictures up front for the folks who just want eyecandy. There are instructions in back which are recipe-style, i.e. complete enough to let somebody who knows how to do this sort of thing do this particular project. And there is a wide enough variety of projects/looks in the magazine to please a lot of different people.

I loved flipping through this magazine, especially the features on individual artists. But at $16 per issue, it was just too much for me to buy. I'm sorry to hear about another magazine closing, though.

UGH.

This magazine has pissed me off enough times now. My husband gave me a year subscription as a Christmas present, and heordered at the beginning of December. He was told I would receive notification either through e-mail or mail, and then be given login information to their website. I didn't get either, and I didn't get my first issue (the holiday issue) until the end of January. A week later, I got the latest issue (Amy Sedaris cover). I received half of my year-long subscription within a week of each other, one of which being old and out of date. Fine if it were 12 issues a year, but now I have 2 left...and it appears that I won't even get that. Not to mention they never sent my login information, I was not able to access their website until just recently (I finally had to e-mail to ask for the correct information), and now I won't even get the rest of my subscription. This wouldn't be so shitty if the subscription itself wasn't $35 for FOUR issues.

Good riddance.

first5times; hang in there they'll be sending you MAKE which is better run and (sorry CRAFT) a better magazine.

I don't know if there was a stuggle over the content or what but i didn't feel it met the same high bar as MAKE. MAKE is written for competent people that want new info.

They e-mailed me and gave me the option of MAKE or a refund. I chose the refund. I have enough magazines to sift through anyway. What a pity, because it seemed to be a pretty interesting magazine.

Feathers has it about right. Compared to other magazines in the same category, CRAFT was way too expensive, and a lot of the projects were either amateurish (Aranzi Aronzo stuffies) or MAKE-ish (anything involving light-up circuitry). The people likely to pay $15 for a single issue of a small magazine are not those who needed the kind of content they were publishing, especially when you consider that a strong, complete instructional book for a given craft usually costs $18-25.

Marie Claire Idees is fantastic -- even if you don't read French, it's probably the best magazine in that category. Beautiful, design-friendly DIY without the hipster quotient.