I have been wanting a crop-o-dile for ages and ages, and couldn't justify it. Then, just before Christmas I decided to treat myself to one, and I will now give you the low-down on how I find it to use after two months.

A crop-o-dile is an eyelet setter tool, something that crafters use quite often for cards or scrapbooks (men: these are like pretty rivetts I believe!).

Eyelets come in all shapes and sizes. You need to punch a hole in some card, then pop your eyelet through the hole and "set" it i.e. splay the metal edges out. so that the eyelet is secure. You might use eyelets for decoration on cards, to hold bits of card together or to strengthen the hole punch so that you can feed ribbon through.

Previous eyelet setters such as the Silent Setter, the eyelet setter + hammer and the Fiskar's Boingy Tool (technical term) do not have a patch on the crop-a-dile. I have tried them all and failed! All of them are extremely noisy, they often require a solid surface to ensure a perfect hole is punched, and multiple sheets of card are difficult to handle.

The crop-a-dile is a silent tool, which does not make a noise as it punches and sets your eyelet.

It looks like a giant single hole punch which has rubber handles for your to grip easily. I personally have freakishly small hands for an adult and I find that the legs of the crop-a-dile are actually set quite far apart, so if you were using it all day (i.e. for wedding invites or suchlike) you might find you get a stiff hand at the end of the day, certainly it could be hard for a child to hold.

The first stage is to punch a hole in the paper/card. Incidentally the crop-a-dile cuts through chipboard and thick cardboard like a knife slicing butter, it is magic. The crop-a-dile has two hole settings, one is 1/8th of an inch and the other is 3/16th of an inch, both standard eyelet sizes (one standard, one mini, both sold in shops nationwide). You punch the hole easily, you put your eyelet in, you turn it all over and are left with a small piece of metal sticking out of your card. Using the "splay" tool at the top of the crop-adile, you can insert that into the eyelet, give the tool a squeeze and the metal is splayed and the eyelet is fixed into place.

It is literally as easy as squeezing twice instead of a lot of messing with hammers and hard surfaces.

One of the limitations is that you can only put eyelets in card up to the length of the crop-a-dile, therefore if you are using 12 x 12 card (as scrapbookers do) you might find the "Big-Bite" is better for what you want as it can set eyelets all over a 12 inch page. I personally tend to use it on cards and at edges and find it does a good job.

The only other limitation is that it does not always collect the hole punches, so you can have a confetti floor quite easily, but to be honest, it is a minor bug-bear.

The tool itself is well made and sturdy and heavy enough to be good quality but light enough to use without your arm aching.

I bought mine from QVC for £15 (special offer) but they are about £20 now with P+P. This came with a free case and 400 free eyelets, which is a fab offer.

If this broke tomorrow, I would buy another straight away. I wish I hadn't have waited so long to buy it in the first place.