Cheap Thrills and Pretty Frills – Scrapbooking on a Budget

As a student, I don’t have a lot of extra cash to splurge on expensive embellishments, fancy papers or even foam tape. Over the years, I’ve come to be very adept at looking for deals and cheap thrills when it comes to paper crafting. And who’s noticed that it’s almost impossible to get decently priced shipping of anything to Canada? The US economy would be booming if only they shipped to Canada at reasonable prices! So more often than not, I and my crafty friends opt out of cheap US prices and pay the premium at Michaels. It’s still cheaper than paying for shipping. But don’t worry, below are some ways I get around these problems.

So if you love to craft but can’t afford to splurge, there are still ways to achieve beautiful creations using thriftier methods. Read on to see my tips:

*Disclaimer, I am not paid to advertise these companies, these are just the ones I use and in my opinion the cheapest products I can get in Canada and I wanted to share these money saving tips with other scrapbookers.

1. ATG double sided tape
   Who doesn’t love ATG tape or just using double sided tape in general? But at 16.99 CAD for two rolls, I used to tape just the corners of a square and pray that my paper would stick…
   So here’s a cheaper alternative to ATG tape, check out The Tape Depot

   For ~$26 USD, you can get 12 rolls of ATG-compatible double sided tape at a variety of sizes. My favorite size is 1/4 inch. This comes out to just over 2 bucks a roll! Much better than $8.50 per roll from Michaels and many other scrapbookers claim that this tape works even better than 3M brand ATG tape!

2. Silhouette Cameo Accessories and ProductsThe Silhouette online store has a full line of silhouette products but they’re usually slightly more expensive than other online stores (but still half what they charge at Michaels).Some of the best prices I’ve found in Canada are on amazon. You can usually get mats, blades and tools for a few dollars cheaper and they’re often part of amazon prime or offered as part of a free shipping deal. For example, I can often buy blades for 10-12 dollars each.

   Others have used Silhouette “compatible” blades like the Graphtec CB09 which can cost only 2 dollars a blade. I’ve personally not tried this before but many claim that the blade stays sharper even longer than the silhouette brand ones.

   BLACK FRIDAY DEALS on the Silhouette online store
   There are really no silhouette deals like the silhouette black friday machine and accessory bundles. For example, a portrait bundle for $99. If ever my cameo broke, I’d wait until black friday to replace it, or if I wanted to try one of their new machines like the Mint. It’s the same price as normal but they throw in extra accessories.

   Check out the silhouette online store here.

   The Silhouette Design store has monthly design sales for up to 50% off. Sign up for their newsletter to be notified of all their deals.

3. Heat Transfer Fabric/Vinyl       Heat transfer material is so awesome but they cost 16.99 a roll on the Silhouette website and $24 bucks at Michaels and you only get about 3 feet of the stuff. I can usually make…maybe 2-3 T shirts per roll.Well, there are a ton of websites out there that sell high quality heat transfer material or adhesive craft vinyl (not heated, just for sticking on smooth surfaces) for much cheaper. One I’ve used recently is Flex Heat Transfer Vinyl.
   Heat transfer and craft vinyl for $3-4 dollars a sheet and it comes in a 12″x 20″ sheet so that it feeds directly into my silhouette cameo.

   Check out the mailbox I made for my friends for their wedding using the craft vinyl: 

4. EmbellishmentsStickers and gemstones can be quite pricey but there are many nice adhesive rhinestones and 3D stickers, ribbons and storage containers from your local dollar store.
5. Eyelets and BradsEyelets are commonly used in sewing and fashion and you can often find a variety of simple eyelets from fabric stores for very cheap. I get mine from Dressew for 25 cents for 50-100 eyelets. Yes, that’s 25 cents! They also sell a plethora of ribbons, beads and flowers for all your crafting needs. They also have a scrapbooking section but I find the quality of the products not up to my standards. But they would certainly be useful to someone trying out scrapbooking for the first time because they’re very cheap.
6. Michaels CouponsMichaels sends out coupons every week and their best ones are the 50% off one regular priced item or the 25-30% off entire regular and sale purchase. Never buy anything from Michaels for full price because they mark up their items by like 300%.Best part is you don’t have to print out the coupons, just show them on your smartphone. You can find Michaels coupons on their website flyer.
7. Pay US shipping prices (often free) even if you live in Canada.                   This tip only applies to people who live close to the US border. Ship your items to a shipping and receiving company (like Hagen’s of Blaine) and drive across the border to pick it up. And fill up on the cheap gas while you’re there!

 

There are many other cost cutting methods I use but they typically involve keeping an eye out for clearance items and finding deals. There are lots of deals at Michaels but the best ones usually sell out immediately so check back often or just be lucky!

What are some of your money-saving tips? Share them below!

 

 

 

Ohmycrafts has shut down and taken customers’ money

UPDATE: January 20th, 2015. 

So about 2 weeks ago, I finally got an email from the owner of OMC telling me that he has been told by the Utah state authorities to pay people back their money by the end of the year. Here’s a screen shot of that email.

So I got a refund back for the money they owed me after submitting documents of proof that I’d purchased something from them near the end of their business.

If anyone else needs to be refunded, I recommend you contact the Utah division of consumer protection or email Kevin Cottle, the owner of OMC. His email is ohmycrafts@gmail.com but he may not respond.

UPDATE: March 17, 2014

So it appears that Utah is investigating OMC and their malpractices. Because I filed a complaint with the Utah Better Business Bureau I was sent an email saying this:

“The Utah Division of Consumer Protection is currently investigating Oh My Crafts, INC. (www.ohmycrafts.com) for potential violations of the Utah Consumer Sales Practices Act for failing to deliver merchandise and for failing to issue refunds to consumers.   The Division of Consumer Protection has received a copy of the complaint you filed with the Better Business Bureau against Oh My Crafts. ”

I have since filed a complaint with them for a refund on the items I didn’t receive. Hopefully justice will be served for all the people this company has scammed.

If you’re a victim of their bad business practice, consider emailing hterburg@utah.gov with your concerns.

This is not a hate post, I am just upset that as a student with so little money to spare already, I have been scammed. I’m a frugal person and that’s why I shopped at their website in the first place because their prices were dirt cheap, so I was willing to endure the months of waiting and getting no responses to my emails.
There are a lot of people out there who were also scammed, much worse than me as they had purchased items that cost 100 or 200 dollars, so I hope that they can get their money back and not feel helpless in the face of evil and injustice.

Ok…that’s the end of my rant lol…

Good luck fellow scrapbookers and may the force be with you!

************ ***********************end of update************************************

So many people have had issues with ohmycrafts, their shipping times, their incessant promotional emails and out of date website promotions. I personally hated how you couldn’t combine 2 coupon codes together in the same transaction and so had to pay the shipping fee twice…never made sense to me, more money for me to pay a shipping company, and more work for them packaging everything…

Regardless of what others have said, I’d always had decent service from OMC and even though the delivery times were slow, they were never this bad. Before, I eventually got all my stuff so I never complained because at least their prices were dirt cheap.

This last order I’d made, I’d had to do 2 separate orders (because of the silly coupon code rule even though the coupon codes were for 2 separate items) and ordered my items in August 2013. After a few weeks of not hearing anything from them I started emailing and asking about my order. I only ever received auto replies. By October, they’d sent out a mass email to all OMC customers claiming their products have been back ordered by the suppliers/manufacturers and that’s why they haven’t been able to deliver on purchases.

By November, I had finally received a partial shipment of my orders and a partial store credit on some items that they claimed they just had no way of getting stock of, even though it was on their website and they were still selling it? And that left the remainder of the items that I never received from OMC. It is now January, over 6 months since I placed my original orders and still I hadn’t heard from them.

So finally having been sufficiently disappointed with this company I began emailing their customer service again to ask for a refund on both my undelivered items and the store credit. After not receiving a response, I decided to do a little digging, see what kind of service they were giving to other customers.

To my surprise, they put a notice on their website saying that due to health and changes in business, they’ve shut down their website. Does this mean I don’t get my money back? Well that makes me very upset about this injustice.

Furthermore, there are hundreds of other unhappy customers. You can read about their complaints here:

1. complaints list

2. Better Business Bureau

If you’ve ordered anything from OMC in the last 45 days, contact PayPal ASAP and go to the resolution centre to open a dispute. 

I suggest you do this immediately so that you don’t lose your money completely, like I have. I don’t know whether or not the justice system will do anything about how these people do business or whether customers will receive refunds on their orders.

Some people placed orders in the last week of December, just 2 weeks before OMC put up on their website that they’ve shut down entirely.

They haven’t responded to my emails nor the inquiries of other people, I can only assume at this point that OMC has no plans to issue refunds or honour the transactions made by their customers. It is your prerogative to contact PayPal to get back your money or wait to see what happens.

It’s really unfortunate that this has happened to so many people. I think that honestly, the people who ran this company eventually became overwhelmed by the amount of people and purchases that were made so they simply didn’t have the man power to keep up with the orders. But there were still bills to pay, and so they kept selling and kept putting up promotions and kept taking people’s money. At least this is what I think. What might really have happened is open to speculation.

If anyone has heard any news of OMC, please post a comment below, your help is appreciated by the scrapbooking community.