My favorite publisher of artistic paper craft magazines is Stampington & Company. Over the years they have continued to add more and more magazines with cutting edge trends and beautiful work. Their magazines are not cheap, ranging from $6.99 per magazine to $19.99, so it pays to be sure which ones interest you the most before you purchase a subscription.

Somerset Memories, with a cover price of $6.99 is a bargain. It is published bi monthly, and an annual subscription can be purchased for $29.95 in the US. Its tag line is to cover scrapbooking and heritage art. The goal for this magazine is to help you create works of art about your heritage that you family will cherish forever.

The April/May 2008 issue is a memory book issue. The articles, covering techniques such as how to paint on pages, altered books, chipboard houses, digital scrapbooking, and capturing life’s little moments, all remained on topic goal. So while teaching the technique how to paint on pages, the theme will always be to save and cherish memories.

Unlike many magazines, many of the page samples are samples sent in by readers, not staff designers. It’s wonderful to be able to see such different ways to display ideas, and what resources are used. When people look around their house for scraps each one of us will see uses for objects. One project had a denim pocket that was once on a pair of pants. That pocket now holds an interactive memory.

The Special Features are written by non staff members. They are artists that have submitted their work and explaining how they made their special scrapbooking pages. These articles are written in the first person, making each article very personalized. “I did this because I had this experience as a child.” I found some of the grammar slangy with colloquial errors, which made some of the reading more endearing.

The magazine is packed with ads, but in this case advertising can be good. The ads made me want to go online and see what I was missing. Maybe I need that stamp… Of course, many of the ads are for Stampington & Company, and that could get to be a bit too much. Considering that Stampington puts out so many great publications, if you read more than one each month you are seeing the same advertising over and over again. Their ads no longer seem fresh and new.

And the most fun part of Somerset Memories is the enclosed Artist Paper. Each publication has a paper sample that can be pulled out and used in your own projects. I can't explain why, but every time I make a project using their paper it seems my project comes out just a little better that usual. Coincidence?

I cannot praise Stampington & Company enough for all of their many publications. In the upcoming weeks I will continue to review several of their other publications.