Hello, the tide of inevitability has washed over me, and I am about to try out loom bands for the first time.
I've seen a squillion different kits & sets - what should I be looking for? Are some brands better than others? Would love to hear your recommendations & where the best place is to get them.
Definitely go for the original Rainbow loom kit. The bands are latex free and honestly, they are the best quality ones out there - the other ones start to perish and split after only a few weeks and they just don't cut the mustard. The loom frame is also a higher quality than the cheap ones - I originally got the girls the 'funloom' brand sold through BigW and they are starting to break and the pins bend when we have done some of the more complicated designs that put a higher amount of tension on the pins when you are looming the band up. I looked at the lincraft bands and even in the packet you can see that they are already perishing - not worth the $3 you pay for them when you can spend an extra $2 per packet and get higher quality ones in the Rainbow loom brand. Spotlight has the Rainbow loom kits for $20 which comes with 600 bands to get you started and you can also buy them online as well.
I just got DD a kit from our local cheap shop. It seems to be ok. She also gets her bands from there too and we've never had any issues. If I thought she was going to be using it for a long time to come, I'd spend more and get her a better quality one but I'm not really into spending too much on fads.
We went through three of the cheaper loom kits with the plastic snapping. So we ended up getting a more expensive one I am guessing it's the rainbow one, not sure. I do get the cheaper bands though, my kids go through a lot with all three looming so I have managed to find them for $1 a packet.
My 6yr old is obessed with looming.
Definitely get the rainbow loom board. Toys r us & big w sell them as well.
For the looms the cheaper ones do my daughter fine but she only does the easier bracelets so i get her 12 packs for $10 for myself I get the rainbow loom ones. I do a lot of charms & harder bracelets & the cheap looms either break under the tension or stretch so much my chsrms lose their shape.
I also like the metal rainbow hook much better than the plastic ones.
We have a couple of different ones and I'm with the others that prefer the original rainbow loom. It is definitely better quality. The original cheap ine we had broke very easily. And the one have from kmart is nit adjustable so hasn't been used at all. The container was ok though so I got it for dd for the variety on bands and the storage. She has a couple of little friends that visit and want to use the loom bands so the kmart boards will come out when they are visiting (one is very destructive and I'd rather the cheap one was at his disposal )
We have a mix of bands from different sources. My nieces school sells them as one of their fundraising things so dd mostly gets them there.
Exactly what Trillian said, right down the pegs bending on the fun loom branded one from B!gW. The rainbow loom branded one also comes with a metal tipped hook, which I find is way better for some of the more tricky designs where there is a lot of bands on each peg. The plastic hooks just bend.
I got the cheap $5 set. It is nasty and the pegs seem to be pointing in the opposite direction of the ones in the tutorials lol, but we are only doing simple ones. I am not overly good at it - other day I did some that looked right but when I went to take them off it seemed that none of the bands were joined to each other and the whole lot shot off everywhere. I managed to do that three times in a row! Tonights effort was a bit better and all three kids went to bed happy with a new band
I guess if you think you will get a fair bit of use out of it then the brand ones would be better but if they are only a causal novelty thing like ours then el cheapo works just fine.
We got ours from Neds (a cheap nick knack shop) and Mum saw the hooks in it and gave us her crochet hooks that she no longer uses. After two weeks though the novelty wore off.
Actually, I change my opinion on the cheap things - we (I!) spent ages making a fancy railway band last night and today the bands broke and it all fell to smithereens.
Does anyone have any recommendations for sites with instructions that are not videos? I hate having to watch videos (because normally want to do while watching the TV) but also because I like to study the pattern first?
Not really found many written ones, but have done a couple of video ones now and I think probably can live with the video - now I get the principles, I just prefer to see what I am going to do before starting and with the video I am too impatient to watch it before I start - is easy to skip ahead with written instructions.
Riot had a sale on this week - I got the original kit + 10 packs of bands (not sure if they are all the original ones though) for $23.00
I used to make alot of friendship bracelets as a kid/teen using embroidery threads, and at first I thought why the need for the elastics, but they are much easier to pick apart if go wrong (want to reuse), and cheaper than embroidery threads. The elasticity adds an extra dimension too. I am a convert.
Oh dear I am hooked, making my own designs up now. Have entered a competition to try win ten loom band packs :-) I have written down some tutorials (fairies - tinkerbell etc as kids obsessed with them) just so I don't have to watch the videos. I do use some of my crochet hooks with them.
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Loon ... I mean loom bands
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