Scrapbook Magazines Old & New: 4 Quick Thoughts

  i've bought and subscribed to scrapbook magazines since 1997.  Probably 300 have come in, and very few have gone out.
  So, while it's not exactly a New Year's Resolution, i'm looking through them and trying to thin the herd.
  Here are some observations about the magazines over the years:

1. Magazines before 2000 are mainly of historical value.  And that maybe only to me.
2. The best ones are about 2000,2001 to 2005 or 2006.  There's a lot of fresh, informative editorial content.  i don't read an article every time i open the magazine, but many of them, i get more from now than when the magazine first came in.  The page ideas have moved beyond "sticker sneeze"and endless shapes & silhouettes to well-conceived designs, but the artists have not yet become enamored with dimensional embellishments.
3. From 2006 on, the  best reason to get a magazine is to see what your fellow artists are doing, as far as i can see.   The photographs are phenomenal, but there's very little to read, and the page ideas aren't as inspiring as earlier issues.  It's mostly photos and captioned how-tos with shout-outs for the jazzy websites.  Most of the captioned how-tos are for party decor, but no games or fun stuff that would make the heart of a party.  What few articles there are, and i mean artcles with any word count to speak of, are rehashes of what i've seen in earlier issues.
4. That said, if you want to keep up with the latest products, if you are a scrapbook fashionista, you will probably think differently on this than i do.  Likewise if you are of the plugged-in generation and prefer video presentations to pages of thoughtful text, there's no point in looking for someone's garage sale older editions.