Die'sire Create-A-Card Die from Crafter's Companion

I hardly write any product reviews, mostly because I love most of the stuff I buy, and I am brand loyal. I stick to brands I like and I've never really been disappointed with whatever they come out with. One of the brands that I've supported is Crafter's Companion. My very first markers were Spectrum Noir, and I loved them. That is until I gave in and spent on Copics. But still I bought the Spectrum Aqua when they came out, which I've also now ditched in favor of Zig Clean Color Brushes. And since I'm really brand loyal, I splurged on the entire collection of Spectrum Noir Blendable Pencils. Even though I think it's ridiculous that they don't sell the pencils individually, for the love of Crafter's Companion and Spectrum Noir, I bought it anyway. I was fairly satisfied with it, until I tried Prismacolor to see what the fuss was all about. And as if I haven't been burned enough, I just recently purchased all the Spectrum Noir glitter pens. When will I ever learn??? What is wrong with me?

So last week, when HSN was having the papercrafting special on TV, I again bought in to the much raved about Ultimate Tool. What can I say, Sara Davies is just way too good! How can you not give in to what she was selling? I couldn't resist. I bought the Ultimate Tool with the bonus DVDs, and I also bought the Create-A-Card Swirls and Curls. I would've bought the Garden collection, which is really what I wanted, but they sold out, and at $34.95 I figured I'd settle for the Swirls and Curls.

Like any other crafting sisters, I was so excited when I got the email notification saying my order has shipped, and I'm getting them in 2 days. The package arrived Saturday, perfect timing! I couldn't wait! I opened up, checked out the Ultimate tool, popped the DVDs to make sure they play on my Mac. I've seen reviews on HSN about these DVDs not being Mac compatible, but fortunately, they worked fine for me.

I then opened  the Create-A-Card, so excited to create my first card using this unique die that supposedly does not cut the entire thing, but allows you to die cut only one side, leaving the other edge as part of your card. Here's what it looked like the first try. You'll see some overlapping, because after running it once on my Big Shot, it didn't cut through. So I positioned it again and tried to run in through my machine 3-4x again.



It still did not cut through. As you can see a big portion of it was not cut through. So I turned it upside down and tried to redo it again using my other end of the cardstock, this time continuously for 8x at least. Each time looking to see how far it went. If it cut through or not. After 8x, I thought this should be pretty cut through nice and clean already.



But look! It still did NOT cut through! I decided to take a blade and slice off the rest, but then the white core of the cardstock started to show, not to mention the back part of it tore as I punched through those holes. And who am I kidding, why bother when I can't use this piece to make a card anyway. I decided to just ditch it.

I am very disappointed. I remember on HSN Sara was saying these are high quality dies, that it can cut through these intricate designs. I remember hearing that even the Cricut can't do this. I didn't buy these because of that statement. I honestly bought it because I liked how it only cuts one side/edge. I loved the samples shown on air. I really wanted the Garden collection, but settled for this. But if this is how their dies are, I think I'm not even going to bother waiting for the Garden collection to become available.

I am a big Crafter's Companion fan. I own a lot of their stamp sets, and truly believe their items are really nice. This is my first die purchase, and probably will be my last. I've never been this disappointed with a die I've owned. And I have 5 full Artbin Die cases full of dies. At some point I wondered if it's user error, but then why would it have cut the rest?

I've yet to try the Ultimate tool. Will post what I think of it when I get the chance to create a project using it.