a review (of sorts): 100% cool badgemaker

Yesterday, I made a trip to Michaels in hopes of finding some kind of "lazy man's" kit (or contraption) for making recycled paper because I had this big plan of using it to make some seedbomb paper. But the local Michaels store didn't have anything like this, so I will have to do things the "hard" way and possibly ruin a blender for that particular project...

And while that might've ruined my night, I later found out that the trip was not a complete waste.


I walked around the store for a bit and came across the crafts for young girls aisle. I scanned over the blindingly pink colored items, skimmed the lace-frilled fabric and "girl power" emblazoned products, and my eyes instantly locked-on to a product that I felt would entertain me for at least one evening.


Say hello to Fashion Angels' 100% Cool Badgemaker! (or for those of you who have no idea what they mean by badges, they're also called pinback buttons.)

I figured I'd go ahead and buy it because I've wanted to try making my own pinback buttons and it's not like I'd be wasting any money if it turned out to be a total pieceofcrap. After all, it was only $3.99 (well.. $6.99 originally, plus a 50% off coupon.)

Besides, the sample badge of the drawn elephant on the cardboard display was, sadly, a little more than enough to entice me to try my hand at this product.



So here's what the kit looks like after freeing it of the plastic shell prison (minus a few pieces because I made a few "badges" already.)

In this kit, you get 1 plastic badgemaker, 10 plastic badges with pins attached, 10 clear plastic circles, and 10 paper circles.

To start things off, you'll need to read the included instructions. But this is where things take a confusing turn. The instructions have no text to go along with the pictures, and normally this would be fine, but the pictures alone are confusing because they actually could use a bit of text explanation.

First, the instruction sheet gives you a picture of all the products that come with your badgemaker kit. Notice anything odd? .... Yeah... The instruction sheet tells you that your kit comes with 10 pieces of 3 plastic components. But when I opened up my package, there were only 10 plastic badges/buttons.

So what do I do now?

Well... what the instructions FAILED to mention, was that I was supposed to somehow deconstruct the buttons into 3 separate pieces, and I was supposed to figure out how to do this on my own.

I tried prying the pieces off of each other, and after 10-15 minutes, I finally figured out that I was supposed to twist the pieces off in a clockwise motion:

Yeah.... these instructions are definitely a major fail. Especially considering that this is a product intended for children, and even as an adult I had a hard time figuring out the missing instructions.



So I'm going to have to say that this product is definitely not worth 6.99, but paying 3.99 for it wasn't so bad. I mean... I did get some interesting buttons out of it after all:

:)