RicciL's Reviews

Over a 20-year period, this is my third trimmer. The first, and by far the most expensive, was a rotary trimmer. The second was the same type as this Tim Holtz Precision Trimmer. Tim’s is the absolute best and I bought it based on his reputation and my experience with other products of his. It is the first trimmer that cut a true, straight line. When I cut my card stock to make a card, it actually folds in half perfectly, both sides lining up perfectly. Also, the blade cuts through the paper like butter. I’m hoping that the blade lasts longer than those for the other similar trimmer I have. Based on its performance, I am optimistic that will be the case. Also, the price point on this trimmer is exceptional.

I purchased 3 bottles of this about a year ago because sometimes it is out of stock. I opened and used one bottle with no problems. Then I opened a new bottle from the same order. It had the consistency of “slime” and was so thick that it couldn’t be squeezed out of the bottle. I removed the stopper/applicator and tried to use the glue, but it was just too thick and caused my paper to curl. (Not to mention the huge mess it caused as I tried to spread it around.) So I opened the next bottle. It took a little finessing, but I finally got the glue to flow, but not as easily as the first bottle. I bought this new bottle and opened it right away to make sure it flowed easily. I’m afraid to get any backup bottles of this for my supplies, but love this glue when it works as advertised.

Glitter paper from several years ago is very coarse and it’s hard to adhere anything to it. This paper is smooth and thin. I did a quick test with glue dots, runner tape, and liquid glue. All mediums worked to adhere paper to this glitter paper. I like that the paper is thin, too. You can build up elements on a card with adding a lot of bulk.

I like the size of this bird. It’s not too big and not too small. The worm is a cool addition to the set.

Oh, man, I love this stamp. I stamped the image on water color paper using a permanent ink. The image does not lend itself to being colored, so I plan to play with some different inks to add color behind the image; it’s going to be awesome! Using embossing powder on the whole image would also be fabulous. Stampendous has gloriously detailed rubber stamps. I always wonder if I’m doing something wrong when I open one of their cling stamps; it seems like I’m peeling away part of the cling side of the stamp and it always leaves residual glue on my acrylic blocks that needs to be removed with Goo Gone. I hate to lower my rating if “operator error” is in play, so I won’t.

I bought this stamp mainly for the sentiment, “ Your heart and my heart are very, very old friends.” That melts my heart! My grandson has an uncle who is his favorite person in the whole world, other than his parents. I’m going to make my grandson a card kit to put together so he can send his uncle a homemade card. These stamps make very clear, fully and consistently colored impressions even with die inks. There’s not a case where some of the letters are darker/lighter than others.

For whatever reason, I’ve not been able to find olive card stock, so I ordered this sheet of paper and will use it sparingly. It’s nice quality for background paper on a card, but it’s not card stock. And it wasn’t advertised as such, so there was no surprise there.

What’s not to like? I love the vibrant colors and the nice patterns. Sometimes specialty paper has such large images on them that I hate covering any of it up with sentiments and embellishments. This paper will make beautiful backgrounds and embellishments.

I only ordered one sheet of these, but wish I’d ordered at least two. Having said that, I haven’t tested the stickiness of the adhesive backing, but it wouldn’t be that difficult to work around weak adhesive. These colorful, little gems are pretty small and look like little colored crystals. I often forego embellishments on cards because of the possibility of a sorting machine at the USPS ripping the card/envelope, but these are small enough to ally my concerns about that. And they’re SO shiny!

I’m going to love making some cards with this good quality, vibrantly colored paper. In the past, I wouldn’t have paid around $7 for a 6x6 pad of paper with only 24 sheets, but I’ve honed my skills over the past several years and am less likely to have paper waste. So here’s hoping to get dozens of cards out of this one pad. Measure twice, cut once!

The quality of this paper is good, but I’m not so sure it’s worth about $1 per sheet. I don’t know why they were made double-sided as opposed to just giving you one sheet of each color. Perhaps some clever crafter can make something awesome where both sides of a piece of paper are visible at the same time. Maybe origami?

This paper is a nice thickness - about that of high quality copy paper. The color co-ordination is good and it adds interest in a project because the two patterns are so very different.

I like the muted tones in these enamel dots. They are shiny, so they still brighten up your project. Each dot is perfectly round.

The colors and variety of sayings and images in these embellishments/ephemera are so much fun. I also like the thickness of these - not too thin, not too thick. I also thought the pricing on these was reasonable.

These are such nice sayings for scrapbooking, but also for cards. The stamped images were clean with full coverage. I tested them using die ink, which is more likely to pool on a photopolymer stamp. But there was no pooling and the stamped image was consistently applied across the sentiments. For an even crisper, bolder image, you can try a pigment ink like Versafine.

I was so happy to find a variety of sentiments for Thanksgiving. Year after year, my Thanksgiving cards had the same three sentiments. The stamped impressions were clean with full coverage. I used die ink to test the stamped image because die ink is most likely to pool on a clear stamps, leading to uneven coverage which isn’t ideal for a sentiment. But it covered beautifully, so I’m sure you’d get an even crisper image if you chose to use pigment ink. But, really, with these stamps, the die ink worked well.

These embellishments are shiny as opposed to having a matte finish, so will nicely standout on your card or scrapbook page. All the dots are perfectly rounded.

Although this paper is not the standard 8 1/2 x 11, I still like it. It is from India, which explains the size variation - 11 5/8 x 8 1/4. The color is a bit darker than it is in the photo - more of an emerald green. The thickness is nice; it appears to be thicker than 65# but less than 110#. It’s definitely thick enough to use as a card base; it’s heavier than the “Heavy weight” card stock from the Paper Studio.

This paper is thinner than cheap printing paper. At best, it could be used for accent paper on a card front. The colors aren’t muted like they are in the photo of the product. They are very garish. Even as an accent paper, I’d only use it as a small embellishment.

I decided to try these scissors when I saw that they were a “We R Memory Keepers” product. The quality of the packaging alone was impressive. There was no way these were going to be damaged during shipping. I got these to help with fussy-cutting - not my favorite thing to do. They were excellent for getting into nooks and crannies. The quality of the product appears promising and I’m hoping these will last me for may years.

I used this pigment ink pad to stamp a sentiment on some dark-ish card stock. It was barely visible. By the next day, it was even less visible. I’m very disappointed, especially because I trust Scrapbook.com products and ordered the Metallic Frost ink pad as well, along with re-inkers for each pad.

This is truly a non-slip ruler created for the Make Art Stay-tion.

I love these stamps. They will be nice for cards and scrapbook pages. The Santa sleigh and reindeer stamp is almost 6 inches long, so your card sizes are limited unless you design a clever way to get the whole image to show. And it can be done, but this isn’t the place for instruction.

I love this stencil because I make and send hundreds of cards each year; most of them are mailed. I like to wrap twine around the card fronts, but they become problematic in the mail. This stencil creates crisp images. It is 6x6, so you have options for card sizes.

Get yourself a stem stamp, or a fine marker and make yourself or your friends a nice garden on paper!

This is a nice set because of its simplicity. I wanted some dies that would produce simple foliage that I could tuck behind circles, squares, rectangles, etc. that I would use to stamp sentiments or fun images for the front of a card. Using foil or shimmer paper for these as accents is a nice touch. It would be best to use double-sided tape on the papers you use for all except the large-leaf die. Then you don’t need to mess with applying glue to narrow bits.

The stamped image is about 2” x 2”, a nice size for a homemade card that is 5.5” x 4.25”. It is a rubber stamp and includes a lot of detail.

These inks so easily transfer to stamps and then to paper and all of these colors look just lovely.

This is a PERMANENT ink. It transferred well to my stamp and made a bold image on my paper and on vellum. It was taking quite a while to dry on vellum, so I used my heat gun; once dry, it didn't smear, even with a vigorous rub with a cloth. WARNING: The ink will stick permanently to your stamp. I have two heavy-duty stamp-cleaning solutions (Stampin Up stamp cleaning pad with heavy duty cleaning solution and Ranger Archival Ink Cleaner). Neither of these cleaners budged this ink off my stamp. This ink will probably be perfect on non-porous surfaces and perhaps on T-shirts, though I've never tried it on cloth.

I like Pooler ink pads because they easily ink up stamps and they smoothly transfer to card stock. I find that red is a difficult color for ink pads; many of them look more pinkish than red once on paper. This ink, however, really does look red once it's transferred to paper.

The color of this ink is lighter than I thought it would be, but once I stamped it and compared it to the color on the lid, I saw that it matches the lid color. And, quite frankly, I'm glad it's not as dark as I thought it would be. It's a pretty color. The stamped image wasn't brilliantly crisp, but it was passable. And it's nice that it can be used on vellum (heat set it or wait several minutes before handling the vellum)

The color of this ink is exactly what I expected and it's very close to the color shown on the lid. However, the stamped image, using a high-quality rubber stamp, was blurry. I tried it 4 times and used the same stamp I use to test all my inks, but each time the image was blurry enough that I'd be embarrassed to use it on a card or scrapbook page. This pad will be used for blended-ink cards (e.g. part of a sky at sunset).

I like the coverage of this ink and the fact that it is a hybrid ink. It worked well on vellum as well as card stock. The color was more yellow than orange, so that was a bit disappointing. The color, once stamped on white card stock, did not look like the color on the lid OR the swatch pictured beneath it. It looked yellow on both the white card stock and on plain vellum.

These stamps produce crisp, clean images. There was no need to "rough them up" with an emery board before use.

This ink is red, but not quite as red as the color of the lid. Most of my red inks, both pigment and dye, appear more pink than red, so I was satisfied that this ink looks more red than pink. It stamps evenly and crisply. It works very nicely on vellum, although, given the non-porous nature of vellum, the image isn't as crisp as it is on standard card stock. But it's awesome that it is permanent on vellum once it dries. Dye inks do not work on vellum because the ink never dries. EVER.

This ink has pretty good coverage on dark or bright, standard grade card stock. It's bolder on shiny, smooth card stock, which is much less porous than standard card stock. It's necessary to heat-set the ink on the less porous paper or let it dry for about 20 minutes after stamping. I've used another white pigment ink in the past on standard card stock and, although you could see the image, it wasn't as bold as this white pigment is. Also, my rubber stamps easily cleaned up using Ranger water-based stamp cleaner even though this is a pigment ink.

These inks appear to be on foam rubber and they ink up stamps very nicely without having to press hard on the pad. The images stamped are complete and smooth looking. Again, it's not necessary to exert a lot of pressure when pressing the stamp on to your paper. These are dye inks, so aren't permanent. There are a lot of colors to choose from. I like that with these mini pads, you can get 8 of the dozens of colors available in full-size pads. And because the ink so easily transfers onto stamps, you get the same coverage with minis as you would with a full-size pad.