Darby Smart Review: January 2015

Little Miss Crafty has been eyeing Darby Smart for some time, so when they sent over a discount coupon code, she was on it! She was given the choice of any one of their products, with the exception of the monthly subscription kit. It ended up taking two visits at an hour each to finally decide. Here's her review/experience with DarbySmart. 

Darby Smart's individual craft items, as well as the craft kits, are separated into nice categories. You could also be like me and just show all, continuing to search through and hoping you won’t end up adding everything to your cart. I decided eventually to filter by kits and kids, since I liked the idea of it all being in one pack - and I wanted to include the kids in the crafting.

I looked through the choices, and there were so many options! There was DIY bubble gum (this is awesome, but one of my kids just swallows gum without chewing it), a kids' knit book (I thought about getting this for the oldest and only girl in the house, but I wanted something we could all share in), and even Glitter mugs (which I might be buying sometime in the near future).

I finally settled on Magnetic Terrariums. This seemed like a good choice for many reasons: a) the price was right, b) there were three in a set, which is perfect and allowed each kid to make one, and c) my husband had asked for a funky terrarium for Christmas and never got it. Since his birthday is coming up, I figured this could be a cute handmade gift for him. Also, they will stick to his desk, which is even better.

The box arrived late last week and was packaged very nicely. A nice sturdy box, packed with the clear plastic to cover the containers, the containers themselves, special craft glue, stones, and air plants. There was also a card with the code to unlock the directions on Darby Smart’s website.

This morning we decided to craft away! The kids had a great time picking the air plants they wanted and pouring the stones into the containers. The magnetic container is very strong and the magnet itself is perfect for this project. (The containers were from Ikea, which made me chuckle because, well, I LOVE Ikea.) I truly love the way this project turned out, although where were some small annoyances.

Our package was missing the reindeer moss, which would have added a little something to the Terrariums. I did notice that they are out of stock on the Darby Smart website so they may not have had them to send. However, it would have been nice to have received a little note stating that in the box. I will be contacting them about this to see if I can have them shipped out once they are in-stock.

Another suggestion would be to provide a template for cutting the circles out of the plastic. They have you trace the outside of the lid and cut it and trim as needed. The problem is that it needed quite a bit of trimming and when I did that, the shape of the circle was off, so I had gaps. Maybe printing out one circle on a template that would fit the lid snuggly but not require trimming would be possible in the future.

Overall, this was great and the kids had fun. They can’t wait to give them to their dad. I will be looking into adding the Darby Smart monthly subscription box to my list shortly, as I am pretty excited about it!

FOLLOW UP NOTE: Regarding the missing moss - I emailed the company and got an immediate response apologizing for the missing reindeer moss. They also said they would get that out to me ASAP. Wonderful and quick customer service! Thank you, Nicole from DarbySmart.