Biggest Scrapbook Expense Regret

Mine would be the original Picturemate. Between the cost of the printer and the cost of the combo ink and paper packs (I never was able to use up a whole pack of the paper, ever, because the print heads were constantly clogged so the ink ran out long before the paper did), I probably spent at least $300 on that thing to get less than a hundred photos printed from it before I chucked that sucker into the trash in a fit of frustration.   And then I felt guilty because I didn't think to recycle it.

Mine would be my Slice. I bought it because it was less expensive than the Craft Robo but I found it so tedious to use - having to cut each letter separately - that I barely used it.
I ended up buying a Craft Robo and I got my money's worth from that. It finally 'died' about a month ago, 10 years old and having worked very hard. I have ordered a Cameo to replace it - I never felt I could justify it while Robo still worked.

Mine is probably the volume of stuff I have purchased. I enjoy having a large stash, so I can scrapbook whenever I have time. But, I purchased things because they were on sale, they were the latest trend, or I had a coupon.

I am much more intentional in my spending now.

My pink bind it all! I had such big plans to do all kinds of mini albums and bind them myself but I always had a hard time lining the holes up and really its too small. I think the Cinch would have been better but I can't pull the trigger on that because the bind it still works...just not well for me.

Yeah, it's the piles and tubs of "little things" that add up to a lot of $$$$. I keep seeing possibilities in things that I never work with. I have several of Tim Holtz's divided cb trays with little boxes that fit into them; 7 gypsies stands and wooden printer trays.  I even saved all those little wooden boxes from the Prima wood veneer pieces: sometimes I think I bought the sets because I coveted the boxes. I DID use a few of them dressed up as Mothers' Day gifts one year, but kept collecting even though there was no more altering on my part.

I loved my first Wishblade.  It cut any true text font and there were some discs with other images on them.  The original one did not weld or adjust letters independently, but I got the software that would upgrade it and that worked really well for me.  I downloaded tons of fonts that included images and I was happy.  But then my computer crashed and I have never been able to get that old Wishblade to talk to any other computer.  It still sits on a shelf in my scraproom, and occasionally I look at it teary eyed.  I LOVED it!

I have read that you can use the Silhouette software with the Wishblade. There are tons of tutorials for Silhouette software. Maybe you can stop regretting that purchase and put it to work. You can use Silhouette blades in the Wishblade. I tried it. You can use the Portrait mats in the Wishblade, too. The Portrait is basically the same machine.

The Wishblade was a good machine. I had the older, blue one. It had a learning curve, but I was able to do so much with it, even though I was limited to cardstock. To get a chipboard look, I cut multiple layers and glued them together.

My biggest purchase regret? I bought the Wishblade a few weeks too early. I loved the Wishblade, but it dropped in price from $700 to about $400 a short time after I bought mine, and I missed the deadline for a refund by 6 days. I got a "free" Xyron sticker machine (the large one) as a token recompense, but I have never used it.

I used my Wishblade to create unique projects for classes I taught at the LSS, and I made enough money with it that I offset the difference in price, but it took awhile.

One item I bought that I regretted was a small Xyron cutter. It only cut a 4x4 size, and it did a crappy job. I bought it on sale, but it still wasn't worth it. I thought it would be useful for taking to crops, but compared to my Wishblade, it was horrible. I hated it.

I splurged on scrapbook supplies & tools for years with no regret but for some reason i never liked my Quickutz. I didnt want it but i got sucked into the deal on qvc with the special typewriter font die set and it came with the REALLY special bottle cap die lol. This was 14 years ago, when typewriter fonts and bottle caps were huge in the scrapbooking world.

Eventually i accumulated 2 Quickutz handles, accessories & 2 full binders with a ridiculous amount of alpha & shape dies. I never used any of it one time. Such a waste of money.

Pretty sure I still have that set in my stash - I do occasionally pull out my QK dies and use them but have 7 binders full I think I already had a collection when that special came about and I know I bought for a while after that. I have shapes and alphas. I think I may need to pull them out and try and use them on a layout or two. I liked that they were easy to use and back when I used to love doing recipe swaps I used them a lot. 
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Honestly? nothing.

I don't have any special die cutting equipment or photo printing equipment, never subscribed to kits, and don't pay to crop somewhere else unless it's a fundraiser. I don't have all the choices that many of you have for your layouts, and everyone's budget is different, but I feel good knowing I haven't spent money on anything I regret. 

When I first started, I bought too much stuff before I really knew what my style was. Most of it was not that expensive but so much of it was not stuff that I would use in the end.

I was never one to buy a lot of expensive machines or tools so I at least feel good about that.

My only big scrappy purchase was my Silhouette Cameo and I love it. I don't use it as often as I should, but I don't regret buying it.
I do regret the paper pads I bought because I saw a layout I liked and thought I needed the paper, too. Then I realized it really wasn't my style and it started its sad existence of gathering dust in a closet.

I spent a year buying from color cast design each month, built up a huge and I've barely used anything I bought, I just had to have it all. I now buy acrylics from Elle's studio and I've used loads of them already

Glad to know I'm not the only one!  I lived an hour from any photo processors besides Walgreens, so I got one and had no end of trouble.  I threw out the ink cartridges and printer a long time ago, but I'm STILL using some of the paper from the packs.  The other thing I regret was a Cannon negative scanner that was so time consuming, such a pain in the behind to use and did such a crappy job that I only used it for a few negatives ever, and probably paid about, oh...$75 for each negative I scanned.