Loom Band It! - Book Review

If your household is anything like mine, these last few weeks you must like me be finding these colourful loom bands all over the place and in every nook and cranny. It seems the loom band craze is taking over the world and both my children have been a part of it. To be honest, anything craft related and that gets them off their gadgets I'm all for it. I know there has been a little press about making the bands on fingers and it not being ideal so we invested in a loom to make them on, not an official Rainbow Loom® but a decent, budget friendly one and it came with 2000 colourful bands! When the children and I (oh yes I had to get in on this craze too) were on the hunt for some user friendly projects, the opportunity came to review the yet to be published Loom Band It book, created by Kat Roberts, a designer and Tessa Sillars-Powell a professional crafter. With 60 rubber band projects for the budding loomineer, it looked a great book, so we jumped at the chance to give it a whirl! 

As expected, it is a lovely colourful book and as soon as it arrived we couldn't wait to get started on a project. It has a great introduction, with useful topics such as getting to know your loom, equipment and materials needed, and how to set up the loom etc. The book does emphasise it's focus on designs and methods achievable on the Rainbow Loom® so there could be some projects not compatible with our more basic loom, but all the projects we have done so far have been fine on ours. After the children had a little flick through the book and a practice, it was my turn. I really wanted to have a go at the pom pom band. I just loved the look of the pretty little pom poms attached to the chain. The loom was really easy to set up following the instructions and I knew I wanted to use a colourway personalized to me.

It came out really well!

Hmmmm a matching ring would look nice don't you think?

It was made following the Star ring project and again I used my own colour choices. It looks like a lovely pink rose ring. I thought I'd then go on to try out the button ring and again very easy to set up. I had the perfect button in mind I wanted to use.

It looked so sweet when I'd finished it.

As Miss Poppins helped, it was all hers, but I couldn't resist a little try on before giving it away :)

Miss. P then wanted to have a go at her own project and she made this lovely Rainbow. The book is set out in various chapters, and the rainbow is in a chapter made up of 'lucky charm' projects. She'll probably add a key ring and pop it on her school bag. 

I really like the simple Chevron design and we made bands and rings - the children enjoyed using the two different colours to create the chevron pattern. 

I didn't want to get going on something too difficult too soon, but I can't wait to attempt the Corsage design!

As you can see there are clear step by step instructions, diagrams and photographs on how to set up the loom and how to hook that really help - it can get a bit tricky if like me you decide to use different colours as of course the loom diagram shows the colours chosen for the project. I think the more confident you get though, the easier it is to work it all out. The children seem to have mastered the loom very quickly. The youngest member of the household is currently in the middle of making this little fella!

There are often little hints and tips at the end of each project which are really useful too and headed in cool up to date abbreviations that all youngsters must know such as JSYK, FYI, BTW, J4F.

Miss. Poppins is wanting to make this Triple Chain next. 

So, as loom banding has never been so popular, the tutorials in this book will really inspire that creative loomineer in you and we have really enjoyed having a go at some of the projects. Loom Band It is available on pre-order and to be published at the beginning of August.

I can see us using up those 2000 bands very quickly indeed! 

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Disclosure: We were sent a copy of Loom Band It for the purposes of this review blog post, all words and opinions my own.