Thursday, September 27, 2012

PRODUCT REVIEW - Inkadinkado Stamping Gear

Hi there crafters,

Here I am in one of the leading craft centres of the Universe and I thought I would avail myself of the opportunity to try a new product, the Inkadinkado Stamping Gear system whilst it was on an introductory offer in Michaels. I had seen some demos of it and thought how easy it made repetitive stamping look.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

The introductory kit contains some cling stamps, a specially shaped acrylic block and one "cog"




You position your stamp where you want it to appear and then connect your cog to it, you can position the block in to any of the slots though the cogs alternate slots are marked for ease of use (no counting!).



Once your cog is sited you can then remove your image and ink before placing back in and stamping your first image. Depending on the look you are wanting you can either stamp again by placing in the next cog slot or miss one. Your design will repeat around the circle and join in to a perfectly formed circle. You can stamp again using a different image on the acrylic block or using a different colour - again, depending on what you want to achieve. The stamping gear system will work equally well using any cling image you have - so long as it fits on the shaped acrylic block supplied. Inkadinkado offer a number of different stamp sets and cog combinations and you can see a video on this youtube link


This was stamped using different colours for alternate slot images
This one uses two images, the second stamped in every other cog slot

REVIEWERS THOUGHTS:

It was pretty simple to use and reminded me of my childhood spirograph!! You can buy different shaped cogs to achieve different effects so you might want to consider buying add ons. The starter kit is around $15 and additional stamp sets around $5 with additional cogs between $7 and $9 - not sure about U.K. prices as I've not seen them in the U.K. yet but I bet you are looking at around 20 pounds for the set. I quite liked some of the stamps and a friend bought the intro kit at the same time and produced a full circle - you would need about an 8" card to show the full circle design but we both liked the off the card effect as shown above. You need to be a little careful that you don't move the cog when removing or placing the acrylic block and I found it slightly tricky to ensure an evenly stamped impression on every image, but that should improve with familiarity. Am I glad I bought it? YES, although I'm not sure I will use it a lot. I bought mine because Michaels had the introductory kit on offer at $9.74 (instead of $14.99) and 30% off the stamp sets which were originally $4.99 - I might NOT have been so keen on paying $20 but the images are nice and can easily be used without the Inkadinkado Stamping Gear system should you not get on with it so ........ if you see it on offer then you might want to give it a go

Hope you've enjoyed my review and found the information useful

Kathy