I just found a good review of the Rollabind Crafter's Kit over at DIYPlanner. I keep meaning to write about this kit, but they have done such a thorough job at DIYPlanner. It comes with a personal punch and binding disks, and is affordable for binding at home or on smaller projects (1-2 books at a time).
Here's the review:
Got my Rollabind Crafter's kit today! Hooray! I bought it for roughly $10 cheaper than the Rollabind site itself, from a new site called "KeepOnCrafting.Com". They're having a grand opening sale, and with shipping the total cost was just under $49 for the Crafters Kit 500.On opening the kit, here are my thoughts:
The personal punch is OK, the little alignment gizzy works but it took a minute for me to understand how to operate it. The Rollabind site has photo instructions for it that I read a week or two ago. The alignment thingy does have a paper clamp so your paper stack doesn't wiggle, which works fine for the small amount of paper you can punch. It also has a disc liner-upper that helps you get the punched paper onto the rings. This is helpful and does work. One bummer: you have to fold the ring liner upper out to line up your paper, then tuck it under to punch, then fold it out again to line up the rings. This is not a good workflow. This gizzy really isn't for 'on the fly' use like you'd have in the office adding a new sheet to your ring binder.
The kit itself is not really necessary. The plastic box I saw in the picture had a lid, what I got instead was a drawer organizer with no lid. All the discs were held in the organizer with shrinkwrap. So now I'll have to repackage the discs in little boxes or bags to keep them from escaping, since I don't have a drawer to put the organizer in.
The 120 discs it came with stack up this way: 60 discs of the microscopic size, 20 each in three colors. I got baby blue, baby pink, and black. Also 60 discs of the next size up, 20 of each in three colors. I got black, red, and transparent. There were no samples of any larger sizes at all. So, this package is slightly useful, but may not actually fit the gizmo I wanted to make, which may have as much as an inch of paper to bind. We'll see how it works out, I might separate the components into individual books, not sure. However, I will be able to use all of these teeny discs, because I have come up with a bundle of different ideas for books to bind up--from a gardening log to a wine log to my kids' artwork..
The puncher will punch .020" rigid vinyl, but only just barely. I have a bunch of this stuff lying around from previous projects, and I'm going to use it for covers! Whee! It will punch about 5 sheets of 24lb paper comfortably. I have to line up the puncher twice to do my quarter-letter books, which could make the punching process tedious, but I need to get some mileage on it before I spring $50 for the desktop punch.
I am WAY impressed with how the rings and punched paper interact. I looked at the Rolla notebooks in my local Staples and was totally underwhelmed. The rings fit too tightly in the holes and the notebooks were stiff. Likewise there was a lot of shredded paper around the punches making the situation worse. But this, with the personal punch and my own good paper, is far superior. I am so pleased. I took about 20 pages of scraps, punched them up and bound them in a very short time (with pink microscopic rings) and the book was basically perfect. Easy to move the pages, easy to open and close the book. Awesome. Less than 15 pages, though, is a bit floppy for this kind of binding, even with the microscopic rings. At that point you're probably better off with a staple or stitching.
OK, so final impressions. The personal punch is worthwhile, but you'll get tired of fiddling with the alignment thingy if you have too many pages to punch. You might get more discs for your money with this grouping, but it probably won't be the bunch of rings you'd buy if you picked your own colors. It also might not be the sizes you'd pick.
My suggestion: Get the personal punch if you're doing hipsters or small books. The desktop punch is probably better for the bigger books, higher volume punching, or if you want the flexibility to remove punches in an artistic way. The kit is a nice sampler, but it's definitely not a color scheme for the office unless your office is very creative. :) You might be better off grabbing a few a la carte boxes of rings if you want dignity and sobriety, or if you have bigger stacks of paper in mind.
Anyway, love it! I'm so excited and I can't wait to get my 'hipster' done! And all the other books I've got on my mind now..
shris
