Awesome Iron-Ons Kit
Reviewed by Cynthia A. Sorrels
Published by PrintPak

Age Group: Age 8 and Up Type: Art & Creativity Price: $29.95

Description:

What You Can Find Surfin' the Net...

Browsing through the software company pages on the Net the other day, I noticed a listing for PrintPaks and decided to take a detour. What I found there was truly amazing: multimedia crafts designed to combine the computer with traditional crafting skills. These programs are targeted towards kids, but adults will enjoy working with all this title has to offer. And the best news yet: every kit comes with EVERYTHING needed to complete the project - and refill paks are available!

PrintPaks was formed by three friends who wanted to work together and believed that computers should do "more." Well, computers certainly do more now!

Step by Step

The software program provided with the Awesome Iron-Ons Kit offers very clear, step-by-step instructions for the entire process, from designing and customizing the project to ironing it on. You may choose to do one large design or four smaller ones per page and four pages come with the kit.

So we dug around for old t-shirts to test out! You see the design our 3 year old chose, and yes, she wanted it to say "Dancing Bawina." (She can't quite say "ballerina" yet.)

The instructions are excellent; we chose and personalized our design in a matter of minutes. Then came the PRINT time. We loaded our HP Inkjet with the special paper, just as the instructions said...and THEN... we were informed that the 15 megs free on our hard drive wasn't enough to print the images! SO, we dug around, deleted a few hopefully non-important directories and tried again. This time, it worked! Our designs printed beautifully, in color. We were all so excited - and ready to iron everything in sight.

A word of warning: read the directions. READ THE DIRECTIONS! You'll be sorry if you don't. I deliberately didn't read them (yeah, right) so I could tell you what happens...a big mess. Ruined t-shirts. Screechy children. A husband who wonders why you get into these things. Actually, it takes a little practice to get it right. There's a knack to knowing when to move the iron and pull the backing off. By the fourth design, I had greatly improved, although it wasn't perfect, by any means. But we still have three sheets, and one of these days...

Installation, Graphics, Audio

The program will take 10 megs of your hard drive space, a precious commodity around here! Other than that, installation is very easy and fast.

Since the instructions are read aloud, it is important that the speech be easy to understand - and it is. Max the Dog speaks very clearly throughout the program.

There isn't much animation to this program, but the background and colors are bright and look like fun right away. The title will allow use of PhotoCD images, BMP and TIFF files, as well.

Craft Supplies

All the supplies you need come along with the software! What a great idea! Somebody finally figured out that parents don't have time to run around craft stores looking for all the little pieces their kids need to complete that one project. The only suggestion from here is that the supplies need to come with a packet or folder or zip-lock bag - something to hold the leftover stuff.

Refill paks are available. Who could beat that??

Reasonably priced, productive children's software...what a concept! One of the things I really like about PrintPaks is the idea of combining technology with skills like cutting and ironing. But light on the ironing, please?!

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