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The Orb Factory Sticky Mosaics Pretty Cards
by emmad5689
==Sticky Mosaics Card==
Last year for Sophies birthday we bought her the Sticky Mosaics butterfly set and she really enjoyed making all the pictures so I wanted another one for her for Christmas, I looked through what was available and found this one for making greetings cards and knew it would be perfect as everytime there ... is a birthday in the family she always makes the person a special card.
I bought the set from Amazon although I have now seen that Toys r Us do sell some of the range, the set costs me £12.99 although is has reduced slightly in price and currently is selling at £12.09 with free delivery, I find the sets are really great value for money as Sophie gets hours of enjoyment out of them.
These sets are available in a wide range of pictures so there should be something for everyone and you can even get sets of them for making a little jewellery box, you can even get first mosaic sets in the series for younger children as this set is meant for ages 5 and up as younger children may struggle handling the small sticky pieces.
==The Box==
When the box arrived I knew my daughter was going to want to play with the set as soon as she saw it. The box is bright pink in colour meaning it was always going to be a hit with my daughter as that is her favourite colour. There is a logo in the top corner showing that this toy is from the Orb Factory and there is a picture of the four different card designs on the front along with a key of all the different stickers which looks really attractive with all the different colours.
The box is really well presented in my opinion and it makes you want to know more about what's inside it. The box states that this set is suitable for ages 5 years and up over although my 2 year old daughter does help her sister with this although she gets the pieces off the backing rather than putting them on the pictures.
==The Contents==
Inside the box you find a leaflet about other products in the range which I thought was great as my daughter was able to use this to point out which other sets she would like which to be honest is about all of them!
You get an instruction leaflet which is simply a small piece of brightly coloured paper which shows the four finished cards and has a little diagram showing how to remove the pieces from their backing and place onto the template although the set is very self explanatory and the instructions really are not required. On the sheet is also a little key qwhich tells you which sticker to use for which number of the cards, the colours are great and you get metallic silver and gold, yellow, orange and purple in solid colour, red, pink, blue and green in glitteryand the 3 loyts of different gems which are a pink square, a pink heart and a purple flower shape.
There are 4 different cards to complete and you get 2 of each making 8 in total, the cards are made of a decent thickness of card so that they are good enough to be given to people and they have openings on the front of them so that you can see some design inside. The cards are coloured on the backgrounds and then there are loads of little white shapes with the numbers on for your child to place the pieces over, the cards are a flower, a rainbow, a butterfly and a heart with ponies either side.
==Play==
This is a very easy set to play with as I have said the instruction simply tell you to take a piece from the backing and place on the picture although what the instructions actually misses out is that there are numbers 1-12 on each template and you have to match the correct sticky shape with the correct number. As this is sticking by numbers it wouldn't really be any good to a child who doesn't recognise numbers up to 12, my daughter knew her numbers so she could play with the set easily although with we have to lay the sheets of stickers in order of number for her to make it easier and then she just double checks the number before using each one just incase her devil of a sister has moved any of them.
My daughter has really loved playing with this set and everyone who she has given a card to for their brithday has been really impressed with them and of course it makes them personal and you can see she really puts effort into doing them as she has nearly all the stickers lined up perfectly. Sophie always comes and shows me when one of the cards is complete and she is really proud of what she has managed, it is lovely to watch her playing nicely with her sister with them too and of course it helps to teach my younger daughter colours aswell as Sophie will ask for to pass the certain colour of stickers.
==Our Opinions==
The one problem we have found whilst playing with this set is that some of the sheets only have exactly the correct amount of stickers on them which I think is pretty poor, I would imagine that this is because all the sheets hold 100 little stickers and the makers don't want to include a whole 100 extra just incase the child drops one but we have ended up with one card which has had to be finished with a different colour of sticker due to this.
The cards are really great quality and even the insides is fully coloured and has little extra drawings such as hearts and flowers, the back of the cards is plain white but even this has a glossy finish to it. Each card comes complete with a little pink envelope for putting them in although the sticky part of the envelope isn't great and they don't actually stay shut very well.
This set is fantastic, it is great value for money and every piece of it is brilliant quality, the numbers of the cards are very clear and written in bold black writing so they are easy to recognise. The sticky pieces are great and even though some of them have glitter on them there is no glitter transfer and we have found there are extra ones provided as she has some left of numbers she is finished with which is good as she has managed to loose a few pieces generally found stuck to my living room carpets however as I said above this is not the case with every colour.
It is Sophie's 6th birthday in a few weeks and I am currently trying to decide which set to get her next as it really does keep her amused for ages and it's nice to see her taking such pride in her work with them, this set gets a 4 out of 5 simply as we were unable to finish one card as it should have been due to the lack of stickers in a certain colour but the set we had before was perfect so I am stil confident to buy more in the range.
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