Monday, November 8, 2010

Product review for CSN (scrapbooking!)

I recently had the pleasure of reviewing some products for CSN stores. Having ordered big things from them before, I decided to try out some smaller things this time around, and centered on crafty things. Surprisingly, in the midst of all of their large selection of furniture and bedding and what not, CSN also has an office supply store (or maybe not surprisingly, considering they have over 200 different stores).  After a bit of searching through the office supply store and some searching of the term "scrapbooking" I settled on some things to help me tidy up my scrapping section and feed my love of office supplies.  I got various pens and sticky notes (oh, how I love the sticky note.  Almost as much as the permanent marker.), as well as some origami paper and a caligraphy set.  Each of these things filled me with a little bit of glee, lemme tell you.
But the big buy of this round was a set of 6 14x14x4 (ish) totes, perfect for protecting scrapbooking papers and storing all the little odd bits used to wile away the mindless hours of creating something pretty.  These are what I'm going to focus on in the review today.

First, I want to start by saying that for the most part, I really do like these and think they're a great value.  They're a really nice size and shape, roomy enough on the inside that I can store 12x12 paper in them and be able to get out what I want without fighting, but not so roomy that the paper bounces around and the corners get banged up.  This pleases me.  They have a really sleep feel and look, and you can store just about anything in them, and I like that.   I would buy them again.
But there are some detractors for me, partly because I am picky.  Though I love the sleek feel, it does make them a bit hard to stack.  They don't have grooves that help them lock into each other if you want to stack them, so the slickness of the plastic helps them to do that slowly toppling slide thing, and I just see a horrible mess coming.  I ended up going with a side-by-side arrangement, rather than the stack.  Not ideal, but it works.  Also, of the 6 totes, about 1/2 are a little hard to close, or fight staying closed.  I don't know if it's something I'm doing wrong, but the clasps don't want to catch, and I'm afraid they're going to burst open at a bad time and -- again -- lead to a big mess.
Just something to be warned about, though again, I would by these again, and they are very nice-looking and heavy-duty feeling.

https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=9a5d3f8da1&view=att&th=12c28f9c2288419e&attid=0.1&disp=inline&realattid=1351800656010149888-1&zw
As for CSN stores itself, I am thrilled with the service.  They ship things to get to you the quickest way possible, rather than hanging on to all of your order to ship at once, which may cause delays.  I got everything lightning fast and well-packaged, and everything was very reasonably priced.  (In fact, I've even bookmarked some things for future purchases and gift ideas.)

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