S/O: How do you define "buying a collection?"

For me it is buying all, or almost all of the available pieces. If a collection includes something I know I'll never use, like a pack of washi, or a stamp set, but I buy everything else, I'd consider that buying the full collection.

Buying at least 90% of the products available in the collection.

I hardly ever do that. There is always embellishments or stamps/dies and even paper I don't want.

I have maybe bought 4 almost full collections over the years. The last was a CP line. Didn't buy the trees or tags. Got everything else.

For me, it means buying the paper package with some embellishments. I am sure I've never bought everything from a line.

The full paper pack with the sticker sheet, one or two embellishment packs, or the sticker book. There was one line where I also bought the 6 by 6 paper pad... 

I almost never buy the dies, embossing folders, chipboard, or stamps and definitely not at full price!

Ditto!

The paper pack or most of the papers and a few embellishments . Even though I generally scrap by collection, I rarely buy all of the embellishments. For example, I bought the paper pack, the laser embellishments, baubles and chipboard words from the Christmas & Sunshine 49 & Market collections. (Love both, btw)

Yeah, I think it's just about everything.

I've only done that once and it was this year.

I bought almost all of the Simple Stories Trail Mix line. When it arrived I absolutely loved it. I could not imagine it would be better in person. So I went back to ACOT and added to my cart two of the things I hadn't bought the first time that I decided I needed.

I didn't buy the brads. I never buy brads like the ones they make. I didn't get the washi, the stencil, the stamp, the enamel dots, or the frames.

I still feel like I bought the whole collection.

I probably could have saved money if I had bought the kit but at the time I didn't want the journal bits and pieces. But then I went back and got them.

To me collection includes all or most of the papers and some of the stickers or ephemera. If a line has stamps I rarely buy them since they’re usually pretty generic and goodness knows I have plenty of stamps. I will sometimes get the enamel dots if I don't have anything that matches.

I haven't done this in years but back when I did, it meant most of the designer paper and probably 2-3 embellishment packs. The papers were always the most important thing to me.

I think of a collection as all of it. Whatever is released by the manufacturer; paper, embellies, stamps, rubons etc. What I purchase from a collection is different. Usually just the paper pack and maybe some embellishments.

There seems to be two different types of scrappers here. Ones that pick and choose and only buy a paper or two from any one collection. They mix and match from lots of different lines and manufacturers.

I'm the other kind of scrapper. I have each collection in a bag with the embellishments and I pull out a bag when I'm ready to scrap. I will go through my stash if I need a particular color paper but mostly I stick to matching papers from the same line. I do have general embellishment containers with bags of wood pieces, enamel dots, buttons, ribbon, etc., that I will dig through for my embellishment clusters. I keep those separate from collections.

But when I post my layouts here I can usually say- this layout is Doodlebug, this layout is 49 & Market, etc. I consider myself a collection scrapper. Or a kit scrapper- I do love kits.

This is exactly me.  If I am getting the main paper pack, or most of it and some additional embellishments then I am buying a collection.  These days, it would be really really spendy for brands like 49 & Market, PinkFresh, etc to get an entire collection offerings -  I am going to say between $50-150 depending on the line.  That is just exorbitant to me.  That said, I just bought 49 & Market Christmas Spectacular items including 2 paper packs, some loose duplicate papers, a wash tape set and an ephemera pack and that totaled over $50 with tax and it would have definitely been over $100 if I had included every offering in the collection.  I have enough to create a cohesive set of pages and if I had bought it all, I could never really use ALL of it!  I know some collections are much smaller so obviously it is brand dependent, but I have noticed more and more brands offering larger collections than in the past.

I have definitely overbought collections in the past so part of this is also trying to reduce excess supplies!


Even for Ali E projects like WITL, DITL, Dec Daily, and Travel, I will consider I have bought the collection if I get the main kit and a couple of embellishments.  Most of the time those collections total $300-$500 (or more for DD), so it is just not realistic or logical to me to get the entire thing.  That said, don't ask me how much I did buy .

I guess it would be buying a paper pack and a bunch of the embellishments. That is just what I have in my mind but I’ve never “bought a collection.” That’s just not how I scrap. I like to mix and match pieces from things I love and leftover random bits. To me, that fun and a challenge I enjoy. I guess the closest I get to buying collections is the story kits from Ali Edwards. But I like to mix and match with those, too. I don’t typically buy her themed kits like December Daily or week in the life. I prefer to buy the extras and pieces offered for those “collections” and combine them with other things. If I buy paper from ACOT, for instance, I buy by the piece from the whole inventory - just whatever random pieces I like. And almost never embellishments from there.