Category: Products & Services (Page 14 of 24)

This year we are not only making all of our Xmas presents ourselves, we are also making our own cards, an activity that the kids had enjoyed quite a bit. I’ve bought a couple of “make your own card kits” and one has worked definitely better than the other one, so I thought I’d write about them.
I first got the Make Your Own Holiday Cards ($9) kit from Amazon.com. The kit comes with 10 blank cards and a collection of punch outs in random shapes, that you can use to create holiday scenes. Of course, you have to be creative to figure out how to turn the shapes into images, and I was disappointed that there were very few samples provided. The kids had some fun doing it, but the results weren’t fantastic. Plus I felt somewhat ripped off as you could achieve the same results for $2 by buying a package of blank cards and a pad of colored construction paper from the dollar store – just cut random shapes from the paper and look at the product picture for inspiration.
I was much happier with the Cool Christmas Card Sticker Scenes set from Oriental Trading. For one, they don’t seem to be cancer-producing 🙂 (see previous post for reference), but for another the 12 blank cards come with TONS of stickers which you can put together to make many, many scenes. And the results look nicer than with the other kit. There are more stickers than you can use with the 12 cards, so you can use the rest with cards from the dollar tree.
The one thing that I wish I’d gotten are stickers/cut-outs with Holiday phrases to put inside the cards. Mika has written some very original holiday wishes/poems in some, but her handwriting is not the neatest. Still, we had fun 🙂

I’m off beading (finally!) and in the look for other things that I can do with the girls. It occurred to me that we could decorate their jeans, bags and other items with appliques. I’d already tried some iron-on ones from the craft store and e-bay before with mixed results, and I thought that the sew in kind may be nicer and more successful. Of course, that was before I realized that Michaela does not like to sew (does she like doing anything?).
Anyway, I bought these appliques (supposedly 150 pieces, I haven’t counted them yet) in e-bay from a seller (ohmymini) in China. I received them today and they are lovely – much nicer than I expected. So much so that now I feel bad “wasting them” on whatever I end up using them for. Given that neither Camila and I can’t sew, chances are that we’ll ruin them on whatever we sew them to. Oh well!

I’ve been feeding my beading obsession by buying most of my beads from e-bay. One of the things I’ve gotten into is getting lots of mixed beads, which sell by the pound (or fraction thereof). I’ve gotten a couple on e-bay from beaddevotion which had perfect beads, some quite beautiful. But they are not cheap.
Amazon, meanwhile, offers Mr. Kitty’s Big Bead Bonanza, a 1/2 lb of mixed-material beads. I’ve already gotten 2lbs of these beads, and they are a mixed bag (literally). About half the beads are quite good. I like the fact that they have quite a few stone ones and a variety of sizes. Another half has problems, misplaced or absent holes, are made of plastic, or are uneven. Still, most of them are usable.
As the case is often with Amazon, the prices for the bead mix change wildly. I paid $3.50 (+shipping) for the first set I bought, and $2.50 for the following 3 sets. At that last price, the sets were a bargain. Right now, however, the same set is selling for $4.50 + shipping. I definitely wouldn’t buy it at that price.
I have LOTS of beads to play with for the time being, but in case my obsession continues, I hope they’ll lower the price again before I run out.
12/28/09 Update
Mr. Kitty’s Big Bead Bonanza is selling for $2.17 right now at Amazon (+ $1.75 shipping). That’s the lowest price it’s been in a couple of months. What’s interesting is that I’ve been following the price of this item pretty much every day for the last 2 months, and practically every day it has a new price – usually within a few cents of the price before. I really don’t understand why they’d bother to change the price so often.
Later the same day: Well, that was short lived – it’s a few hours later and they’re now at $4.72.