You’re one in a melon…
This fun & fruity card is certain to bring joy to it’s recipient and perhaps leave them with a craving for a bite of tasty watermelon!
If you’re not a fan of watermelon - no worries, this fruity stamp set has oodles of fruit combos to choose from.
The stamp and die set is entitled “Mod Fruit Bowl” from Alt & New.
Read on to find out about our price challenge…
This card, or actually stamp set came about from a challenge after some hot topic conversations about stamp pricing and where different stamp companies fall from an affordability perspective.
The consensus from many paper crafters involved in the conversation was that a stamp & die set should not come in any higher than $30 in order to be in the average crafters budget. In fact, most preferred if it were considerably lower than that amount.
$30 dollars in hopes to make 10 to 15 cards before creative boredom sets in leaves each card at a cost of $2 - $3 dollars not including cardstock, inks etc.
With card crafting being not only an awesome hobby for most but a cost effective way to send greetings to loved ones for all of the many occasions that come in our every day lives with the cost savings of the $8- $15 per card in a card shop, a few dollar cost to create a hand made card seems fair.
The conversation again came to the conclusion that Alt & New products were just out of the price range to fall within affordably. ( conclusion of a large conversation, not fact )
Keeping all of the above goals of my crafty peoples in mind, I started the research to find a nice Alt & New set within the price range. Research means I sat on my computer and scoped every paper crafting site I could find for an Alt & New bargain.
I was able to find this “Mod Fruit Bowl” set for a few dollars short of the $30 limit. That included the stamp set and coordinating dies. *Note - Not from the Alt & New site.
Although there were many beautiful stamps, dies, stencils and so forth from Alt & New, this was the only stamp and die set I could find that would fall $30 or less.
The criteria the product had to meet: images, sentiments & dies.
Upon arrival of the stamp set it packaged nicely. The packaging even contained colored sketches of card examples in case a creator may need a little inspiration - so that’s always nice.
The stamps were photopolymer and of great quality. Definitely sturdy construction, those stamps are going to live longer than me. The images and sentiments stamped well, though due to most of the images being solid in nature I used a stamping tool and stamped each image twice, which is standard practice for solid images.
The dies were of good quality and came adhered in their packaging and… I know this is really important to some people - they were single die cuts and ready to use. No assembly required.
To create the fruit pieces - 2 and 3 step stamping is required, so a stamp positioning tool like a Misti is definitely a great asset though not a must if you have a great eye and a steady hand.
If you don’t like fussy little parts and pieces, then this is probably not the set for you.
Also the images have a very modern take on fruit as the name Mod Fruit Bowl suggests - which I found rather refreshing!
In conclusion the Mod Fruit Bowl stamp and Mod Fruit Bowl dies were fun and relatively easy to work with. The quality of the products was outstanding and I was quite impressed with the packaging and presentation of the items.
The first 2 cards examples are above and they were really just quick and easy cards to get a feel for creating with this set. I do plan to create a few additional cards with this since I need to get my 10 - 15 cards from it to meet the affordability factor.
So be sure to check back for those.
Speaking of Alt & New and cost effectiveness, I have a stand alone stamp set for less than $10 that I have created a few cards with and they’ll be coming up this week as part of this little affordability project as well.
You don’t want to miss that!
Until then… Happy Crafting!!