Hey you! I hope you had a great Friday. I had a great one. I had time to play around with some new products and I had lunch with a friend I haven’t seen in a very long time. It’s so amazing how wonderful I feel after spending time with my friends.

Wow today is day 28! I have two more days to go. Today I played around with some new products so my Copics had a little rest. Yesterday, I had a shopping spree at Michael’s. You can read more about the goodies I bought here.

So I wanted to let you know my initial reactions to the new Recollections products that have been released at Michaels.

I tried out the ombre stamp pads and I did not like them. I was so excited they were less than half the price of Hero Arts pads. However, the old saying you get what you pay for definitely applied. I am a stamp lover so you know I have lots of ink pads and I like quality products. For one, when you open them the three shades that make up the ombre are on 3 different pads. I didn’t much like that. It reminded me of the old style multicolor pads. But more importantly, the impression is what I look at and it had a splotchy appearance. I want more of a crisp look so I didn’t like the effect it produced. So I returned all three today.

Next I played with the Color Splash Watercolor Crayons.

I used one of the sheet from the Color Splash 6×6 pad. I first colored a bit and then used my water brush to activate the watercolor effects. My first impression is that the crayons are thick so fine detail coloring is out of the question. The other is the texture of the crayons were more like a lipstick – creamy. So they are very soft so they don’t require you to press down too hard. If I want the color darker I would have to apply more pressure and then when I added water they would produce a vibrant color. I have to say I love the colors they selected for this set. The aqua, gold, green and pink were my favorite. They have predesigned images on the pages so once you color them the images would resist the paint. I thought this one would be fun to color and then cut them up to use in my Project life or other journaling projects.

Another thing I liked about the crayons is they have a slight shimmer that appears after you apply water and remain after it dries. I did swipe my finger over it and a little residue does come off on your finger but no way near the amount that annoying glitter (my nemesis) does. I like how this page came out and look forward to practicing some more with more pages from the paper pad. One thing I didn’t like about them, is that when you color with them, they sometimes produce build up lumps that don’t blend and when you add water they just move around. Think like when you paint your nails and some lint gets trapped under the paint (annoying!!). But I think, with time I can manage that better.

So here are the pros:

• great price especially with 40% 0ff sale
• a lot of crayons for the money
• the colors are really pretty.
• the case is sturdy and cute
• pretty shimmer
• better for background and large image coloring

The cons:

• the build up issue
• not sure what to do with the white one
• very soft
• not for detailed coloring

Overall a winner in my book. I am going to play around more with them tomorrow and I am also going to try using my other color pencils and water color paints on some of the 6×6 papers.

Well I am off to make dinner and have movie night with my family. Have a fabulous weekend!

Belinda