The Crafter’s Box Subscription Review – March 2017

The Crafter's Box is a box for people who love to make. Each month, you'll get unique crafting supplies and tools along to make an artist-designed craft for your home. In addition to the physical items in the box, membership includes access to an online community and an online workshop taught by an experienced maker.

My Subscription Addiction pays for this subscription. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes).

The Subscription Box: The Crafter's Box

The Cost: $65 a month, or $60 a month with a 3-month subscription.

The Products: A curated box of craft materials and specialty tools assembled in collaboration with an artist/maker.

Ships to: US (for free), $10 to Canada and $20 everywhere else.

Check out all of our The Crafter's Box reviews and the DIY + Crafting Subscription Box Directory!

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Each Crafters Box is accompanied by online support in the form of a video tutorial, forum, and  Maker Chat.

This is always very Instagramable box!

This month's project is chunky crocheted baskets.

Every month, The Crafters Box chooses a maker, crafter, or artist who curates the box and teaches you how to complete the project. This month's artist is Jessica Carey.

Welcome to our workshop with artist Jessica Carey. In this project we are exploring basic and intermediate techniques to learn how to crochet with an emphasis in creating chunky knit baskets for the home. Jessica's workshop reviews the tools and materials included in her curated kit, introduces basic crochet stitches, teaches crocheting 'in the round', and explores different pattern and building ideas for basic to advanced

Jessica Carey is the owner and designer behind The Hook Nook and has been desiging and releasing her own finished work and patterns for six years.

This month's box includes seven skeins of bulky weight yarn. The yarn is a synthetic and wool blend to add a bit of structure to the baskets. The box also includes a wooden 10mm wooden crochet hook, a stitch marker, a tapestry/yarn needle, and a stitch glossary with basket patterns.

The card also tells us more about the wooden crochet hook included in the box. I love that The Crafters Box collaborates with small business makers whenever possible and worked with Woolaty in Kiev, Ukraine for this tool.

The Crafter's Box included a printed stitched guide that helped me learn crochet stitches. I really appreciated the printed guide vs. an online guide so I could work on this project without a screen in front of me!

There are photos for each step for each stitch as well as finished product photos that helped me pick which basket I wanted to make.

At the end of the booklet are patterns for 3 baskets along with a quick stitch key. As a knitter, I'm used to seeing patterns written out this way but for someone new to yarn crafts and patterns, this may have been trickier. The Crafter's Box website had a video from this month's maker where she talks about products in the box and goes over basic stitch techniques. Watching this video and seeing how to get started with this project was a HUGE help for me, and I'm so glad videos are part of this crafting subscription.

The box included all the notions needed for the project in a nice cotton drawstring bag. I like that this box always goes with reusable materials wherever possible instead of plastic.

Here's a look at the wooden crochet hook. The hook was easy to use and felt good in the hand. Wood tools like this one can be harder to use for beginners because they grip the yarn fibers a bit more closely than plastic or metal tools do.

I'm glad they included a yarn needle for weaving in ends. I have one somewhere but it would have taken me forever to find it!

A stitch marker is really helpful when working in the round, as it can be very hard to tell where your last row ended and just where you should start your next one.

So much yarn! I'm impressed that they included so many skeins so I can make a lot of baskets for my home. I like the neutral color choices of off-white and almost-black charcoal. The yarn is a wool blend with synthetic mixed in for structure.

Here's a look at the white yarn. It is a nice, natural looking white.

I like this dark, not quite black yarn a lot! The stitch glossary shows mixing the two colors for a striped design on the baskets but I like each color by itself.

Here's my finished project! I made the small basket with handles because I like small things. I taught myself to knit as a teenager but could never quite handle crocheting. For some reason, crochet was a yarn art that eluded me and I've always been so frustrated that I couldn't seem to wrap my mind around it! This box and the project inside forced me to really sit down and figure out this whole crochet craft and I'm so glad I did! I think the little basket I made is so cute and will hold tiny craft supplies so well.

I like those tidy stitches all stacked up! I made this basket in only a few evenings, it was very quick and fun to make. It took less than one skein of yarn to make this basket, so I have so much more to make from this box.

Verdict: I really love The Crafter's Box! I am grateful to this box for finally forcing me to learn to how to crochet, I'm so glad to have been able to tackle this new skill and make something useful for my home. The materials, design, and packaging for this box are always thoughtful and well done. I have very specific taste and this is exactly the crafting box for me. This is not a box for those looking for high value for a low purchase price but is instead for those who love design and crafting and who want to make something new for themselves or their home every month. I like that they often include enough materials to make multiple items, so you can even make more as gifts.

What do you think of The Crafter's Box?