We are quite often approached by companies to review their products and often get sent such a random selection of items, some which are great and others that are not so much. But I am a firm believe in honest reviews and always make this known to companies if they want us to review their product. I love reading reviews on items before I purchase them personally just so I can get a ‘Joe Public’ opinion on something, not just info from a well crafted marketing or press release. So this month I thought I would roll a few of the items we have been asked to review into one review post, and if this goes down well I may do something similar every month as sometimes its hard to write a whole post around something relatively small. This month we have been reviewing a Dreamland Heat Pod, Key Smart and Instax Mini Sticky Shoot Frames.
First up a Dreamland Cordless Heat Pod. I’m a bit of a freezer if truth be told, and sadly I suffer with not great circulation in my hands and feet, even more so know I am pregnant, so I am a big fan of hot water bottles. Plus with our newborn photography we have found that popping a hot water bottle into the blankets on our set ups before we put the baby down can sometimes help the transition and keep them nice and toasty! So when we were approached by Dreamland I was intrigued. It is essentially an electric hot-water bottle…without the water bit! You simply plug it in for 5 minutes and the ceramic pod heats to a certain temperature then your set to go for up to 2 hours! I love the idea for use with the newborns as no hot water means its safer all round, plus it stays hot for longer so I don’t need to reheat it like I have to refill a normal one half way through our shoots. But the down side is the personal use side, its very hard obviously so not good if you like to tuck it behind your back for instance, and once you have heated it once it can’t be plugged in again for 4 hours as it needs to completely cool before reheating. This was a major down side for me as I can sometimes keep a hot water bottle on the go for quite a few hours, by just refilling it if I am under the weather. It doesn’t get as hot as a hot water bottle does at the start (although the thick cover is a little to do with this) but that is actually better for your body as you shouldn’t use a boiling hot water bottle on your skin (my mum has recently been told off by her doctor for using bottles that are too hot) so this is at a safe temperature! So although this is a mixed review I actually love using the Dreamland Heat Pod, especially for our newborns, and I get bad wrists from the cold when at our desk and its been great to pop alongside my keyboard to rest my hand on occasionally to keep it warmer. If you fancy one, it is a little pricy at £39.99 but you can get it from their own site or John Lewis.
Key Smart…Umm…Ok the concept of this little contraption is that its meant to make your big bunches of keys more manageable and tidier to fit in your pocket. Great, in theory. It’s 2 pieces of metal with screws/posts through each end to attach your keys to then tuck them round into the centre, I don’t have a picture of this in use as Jon lost his temper with it after 20 minutes of fussing, but you can check it out on the link if you really want to see it. As you can already tell, we aren’t taken with it, and it won’t be being used. It’s all great if you have keys which are all pretty much the same size so they can slot in tidily, but you can’t use it for instance with a deadbolt key, so this would still have to hang on the end with your car keys. Some of the pictures they use are total misrepresentations as they have this massive bunch of 15 or so keys (all exactly the same key too!) and suddenly they all fit in the Key Smart, except there is actually only 4-6 keys in the Key Smart, so I suppose you just left the rest at home! The one we were sent was meant for 2-8 keys supposedly but you can get extension packs to make them wide enough to fit 22 keys in total, I feel that wouldn’t be any easier on your pocket as the thickness would be huge!! In all honesty it just seems like a waste of money, we could have put it together if we wanted but it just wasn’t worth the effort. But anyway, if your dad is a bit of a neat freak and likes a random toy this might be a good stocking (or cracker) filler for him this Christmas, although its $20 plus postage.
I think I forgot to tell you all what I had for Christmas this year, well my fav thing has to have been my Instax Mini 8! I love it!!! Yes I own lots of expensive camera gear due to the business but I still like the fun of an instant print! And the tiny Instax Mini 8 ones are just so cute, although in all honesty I have yet to work out getting all the settings right but that is half the fun isn’t it (just like my Diana!) So with that in mind and the fact that I have dedicated 2016 to just one craft (I simply don’t have time to craft like I used to sadly!) Project Life, when I was sent these colourful little beauties I was so happy! Sticky Shoot Instax Mini Frames! I have looked at coloured Instax films for a while but they can be quite pricy, so these are a perfect alternative as they are far more reasonably priced. This pack of 80 retails at £6.95 on Amazon at the moment! I was a little worried you would only get a few designs, so have tones of the same one, which I would get bored of quickly, but almost all 80 are different (there are 1 or 2 duplicated between the 4 packs). And the designs are all pretty cute I can see it will be easy for me to use them all, although they will last me a while! So these are perfect if your a project lifer/scrapbooker with an Instax and want to add a bit of fun colour to your films, or just if you love your Instax mini in general but want to brighten them up!
All products provide for honest review purposes
One comment