Live and Learn, Die and Forget It

I wanted to get a set of templates to create curled and tattered edges on a piece of paper. Foolish me, I got a set from one of the big sites that I don't usually buy from. I got a set from a designer that I'd never heard of before. Vicki Stegall is her name, just in case you want to steer clear in the future.

The quality of the pieces, in terms of the graphic image you get is good. However, the templates are a PITA to use. Vicki made them all different sizes! None of the templates are based on a 12" x 12" piece of paper. There is a template that is 8.413" x 2.827". I kid you not. One template that is 12" in length, is 3.72" in width. How in the hoolies can I use them? As soon as I create a clipping mask, I don't have an entire piece of paper with a nifty edge, I've got this stupidly sized strip of paper with a nifty edge. If my paper has a 12x12 design on it, I can't layer in a second sheet and slide it over to fill in, nothing will line up!

I'll admit, I tried. I took the clipping mask piece and tried to append to it to create something that would work under 12" x 12" paper. Can you say annoying? I got it aligned correctly and ready to use. Then I realized that I wanted to use a different template, and had to start all over again. Vicki's system of organizing the templates was useless to me, I wanted to re-do it. Actually, I got so annoyed at that point that I stopped trying to work with those templates. There was just too much work still to be done for the templates to be user-friendly.

I hopped over to the Scrapbookgraphics shop, downloaded the Playing With Paper set from Natali and I'm good to go. The templates from Natali were cheaper than the ones from Vicki. Natali's are based on a 12x12 piece of paper, they are sorted out in directories and I don't have to re-create the wheel to use them. Image quality is excellent and I've even got texture templates to create crumpling in the paper I use. User-friendly? Oh, yes.

Am I going to shop at that huge site again? Probably not. Get another kit from Vicki? Definitely not. I've moved the bookmark for the shop's website to my 'lesser shops' directory. It was in the neutral directory before. There's no chance it will ever end up in the favorites.