In my last post I talked a bit about joining this new monthly kit club. Today I would like to fill in some of the details.

I chose the Scraptastic kit club on it’s price point, flexibility and a review of their previous kit contents. I was looking for something affordable, something to give me just a taste of new goodies and something that had a social aspect to it. Here is how this club works…

1. You can choose from 2 different membership options. The first is a Project Llife style kit and the second is a standard scrapbooking kit.
2. The standard scrapbooking kit has 2 kits to choose from every month. At this point, you get a preview of items via email then email back your specific kit choice.
3. The PL kit is $28/month and the standard kit is $25/month.
4. Shipping is $7 and can include extras that you order for the month.
5. This is a no commitment club and you can cancel at any time. If you want to skip a month, you can cancel and rejoin the following month. However, each time you order back-to-back kits you get a goodie in the 2nd month’s kit. For example if you order October’s kit, then order November’s kit, you will get a freebie in the November kit.
6. There are extras available each month including add-ons for each main kit as well as extra embellishments that can be purchased to include in your shipment.
7. There is a blog with challenges, design team inspiration and a social forum all as part of this club.

So I have used their kits for one whole month now–the month of September–and here are my first impressions…

1. The kit is really reasonably priced.
2. I like being able to add on a couple of extra little items, such as wood veneer (a favorite of mine!) when I like what I see in the email preview.
3. My first kit (September 2013) came with a tiny Basic Grey alphabet. While there were plenty of letters to work with I found it a challenge to make titles with such a small font. This challenge was both a positive and negative experience in that I liked having to think outside the box and also in that I didn’t like having to come up with a new way to do eye-catching titles for each layout. Also I didn’t like the quality of the BG letters. Many of them peeled off their sticky backing as I was working with them. This was especially true when I recolored the stickers to fit my layout, though letting them dry longer may have helped solve this a bit.
4. I have lots of little tags leftover to make cards or to tuck in my stash for later. I like having these little bits as extras. The meant I felt like I had enough pieces to work with.
5. I made 8 layouts with this kit! That is more than I thought I would get. Some of them are very very light in embellishments but that isn’t bothering me. Like I said I had plenty of pieces to work with so it was a color and design choice to make these layouts sparse.
6. I got tired of seeing the same colors over and over again in the embellishment supply (mainly tags)… red, blue and pink. I found it hard to mix up layouts enough to feel like they had their own color scheme.

I’m already noticing differences in the October kit as I start to work with it. So I can compare and contrast the two kits as I draw to a close with the October kit.