When I first saw eyelets in a pre-designed scrapbook page, I thought it looked really nice and I wanted to do that to some of my own pages. I called the local craft store, but they weren’t very knowledgeable about eyelets. Eventually, I tried asking a seller on eBay and found out that I needed an eyelet setter.
Since the craft store wasn’t much help, I contacted Wal-Mart to see if they carried eyelet setters. The lady told me that they had the Fiskars brand eyelet setter and that it comes in a package with three sizes, which makes it a good deal. But by the time my mom got there to buy it, another lady had taken over for the previous lady and she couldn’t find the Fiskars eyelet setter. My mom couldn’t find it either so she drove to another Wal-Mart to buy it. We went through a lot of trouble to find an eyelet setter.
As soon as my mom arrived home with the Fiskars eyelet setter, I opened it and read the directions. One end of the eyelet setter is placed in the eyelet and the other end has to be pulled up and released, repeatedly. I got a piece of wood to do this on because you have to have a flat surface. And it leaves a mark on any surface you use so don’t have anything underneath the paper that you care about.
The Fiskars eyelet setter has a spring in it that makes it come back down after it is released. And you have to be sure that you’re doing this perfectly upright each time, or the back of the eyelet will not be straight. This can also lead to tearing of the paper. It took many times of pulling the eyelet setter up and releasing it to place one eyelet in a page. It’s almost like a mini exercise.
After doing about three eyelets, one of my fingers had been rubbed raw and was actually bleeding. As if that wasn’t enough of a problem, it also ripped the paper more often than it didn’t. So, all of that work was for nothing because the paper would be ripped while doing one of the eyelets on the same page. The Fiskars brand eyelet setter is the biggest piece of junk that I have ever used.
I returned the eyelet setter to Wal-Mart and got a Making Memories brand eyelet setter from another store. It’s the best eyelet setter on the market. It doesn’t have a spring in it either. It’s very easy to use and it doesn’t rip the paper like the Fiskars one either. And since it works differently from the Fiskars brand, it doesn’t rub your hand using it. However, it also leaves a mark on whatever it is that you’re pressing on. But this is normal since it takes so much force to place an eyelet in the paper.
Fiskars may be terrible when it comes to eyelet setters, but they do make really nice scissors.
