I commemorate you hot glue

After finishing my craft yesterday for my post Toilet paper strikes again I realized how much I truly love hot glue.  It's one of the easiest things to use, it can hold what seems like anything and if you mess up on something you can usually peel it off if you get it in time.

So I decided that this post should be dedicated to one of my favorite crafting tools since I feel like it doesn't get enough credit.  And what better way than to post about all the awesome things hot glue can do in addition to creating fabulous crafts.

This is from a great article I found on Yahoo!

1.Loose Furniture Legs-If you have a leg on furniture that you want to secure, this is an excellent way to do it. Pull the leg far enough out to apply hot glue all the way around. Re-insert it fully and let it harden.
Anything you do with hot glue, needs to be performed correctly and quickly. It dries within a minute or two.

2.Assembling Furniture-If you have bought that furniture(such as entertainment centers)in a box, to assemble when you get home, then you know how flimsy it can be. Put your hot glue gun where it will be handy. Make sure you get a few extra glue sticks available. As you assemble the pieces, apply hot glue to the joints of the furniture. You get secure, strong pieces, that don't fall apart when you move them.

3.Bathroom Towel Racks-Have you ever had one of these, just fall out of the holder? Pull it out and apply hot glue to either end. Place back in the holes and let it dry. No more falling out with the towels on them.

4.Repairing Plastic Toys-Most of the plastic toys, aren't meant to withstand the beating they get. However, buying new toys all the time is not very cost efficient. It only takes a few minutes to mold the broken piece back on. Let it dry and you don't have to go shopping. Before you waste alot of time on toys, check to see if they are hard, hard plastic or the softer kind. One is molded,hard. It is almost useless to do these. The softer poured plastic is repairable.

5.Replacing plastic moulding-Anywhere you have a piece of plastic molding, you can use hot glue. It doesn't take much and you have to be neat. A few swipes with the glue gun and you have created a bond. Stick it back on and let it harden.

6.Wall Sinkers- You know those awful wall sinkers that you install to hang things? If you put them in sheetrock, eventually they wiggle into bigger holes. Quick fix is to remove the thing and apply a dollop of hot glue. Stick in back in the wall and the glue provides a more secure, stable hold.

7.Car Door Moulding-The rubber moulding that goes around your car door. Put a small dab around the edge of the rubber and it adheres to the car. Temporary, but functional fix.

8.Shoe repair-If you have a pair of shoes that are coming apart, but need to wait to buy new ones, try using your hot glue gun. It doesn't take much, spread out over the entire loose part of the sole,apply pressure and wait for the glue to cool. Most hot glue is hard within a few minutes.

9.Repair plastic parts on appliances-Hot glue will make most plastics re-adhere to their surfaces.

10.Wooden Picture Frames-Got frames falling apart.Use a small amount of hot glue at each corner. Push back together and hold until cool

11.Virtually any plastic or cloth can be reattached to its host with a hot glue gun.

I also found this article about using hot glue to make sure your clothes don't slip off your hangers:

Lifehacker

Toilet paper strikes again!

Ever since I completed my craft for my post Toilet trees I just didn't feel like I had done toilet paper roll crafts justice.  It was my first craft and I didn't really have a lot of toilet paper rolls to begin with so my options were limited.  But since then, I've been saving all the empty toiler rolls and I finally decided to do something with my over flowing bag of them.  I think I've made my favorite craft yet:

A geometric wall decoration!  Isn't it beautiful??  It took a lot of time and it was a bit of a mess because of the paint but it was so worth it.

So here's what you need:

-A bunch of toilet paper rolls

-Scissors

-Hot glue gun

-Paint of any color (or no paint if you like the brown)

To start:

Cut your rolls into quarters, this will make them the perfect depth but I guess you could go thicker if you wanted.  I wouldn't make them any thinner though since they have a lot done to them

Pinch the roll pieces so that they resemble petals.  Thankfully the roll automatically does this a bit when you cut them so you only have to reinforce the crease

First I made the center part and then painted it white and then once dry, I glued the parts together

Then I mixed some yellow and red into the white to make a lighter color of what I wanted  to end up with

I made sure to place the outside layers before gluing them to make sure I have the right pattern.  Make sure the colored rolls are completely dry before adding them to the white ones because otherwise you could smudge the white like I did on a few of them

Here's a photo of me placing them before painting them.  I found that as the piece got bigger it was a little confusing to remember where I planned to put the rolls so I highly recommend taking pictures to look back and reference once the rolls are painted

Here's my second to last layer, I added more red and yellow to this layer to create that fade effect.  As the wall decoration gets bigger, the rolls will get a bit smooshed but it didn't ruin the look

Here's the finished piece drying.  It looks like there are weird gaps since this picture is at an angle but once you put it against a wall it looks symmetrical

Here it is on while wall, I think it adds a nice pop of color

I think this was my favorite color that it went against.  I would love to see it against a deep blue colored wall but we don't have any of those in my house.  Make sure if you're mounting it on a wall you hang it by one of the white middle ones so that it can support itself.  It might rip if you try and hang it from the darker outside one

Toilet Trees

I woke up this morning feeling groggy and uninspired.  I had originally planned to do a much more elaborate first attempt at reducing my waste, but I just couldn't bring my brain or hands up to the task.  So I fell back on some materials that oddly enough, happen to relate to waste.  Yes, today I made toilet paper roll tree ornaments!
Toilet paper rolls, while their purpose is very important, don't seem to have one once they've been stripped of their white plush wrappings.  They're doomed to end up in the recycling- or worse -the trash (gasp!)  I've seen a few really cool ways to reuse such a trivial item as a toilet paper roll but I figured "'Tis the season", and went with a slightly altered version of a craft I'd seen on Craftgawker.

They were so easy to make and could be modified into some really ornate pieces if you painted them or added beads, but I decided to go with an quick, basic version so a lot could be left for the imagination.
So here's what you need:

-A toilet paper roll
-Needle and thread
-Hot glue gun
-Scissors
-Some sort of twine or string to hang the ornaments (just depends on the look you're going for)
-Cloves (the original post I saw didn't use cloves but I thought they would give it a "rustic" look and they smell real nice)
.

First, make a crease on one side (or both, depending on the type of flower you want), make sure you really flatten the side, it makes it easier to cut and it helps connect all the petals together.

Next, cut the roll into 5 pieces and sew them together at the base of the petals (the reason I didn't glue them together in the first place was because I wasn't sure where I was going to put the cloves and I think it makes it easier to put the petals together if the string is holding them in place)

I put a dab of glue in the middle and stuck the clove in place on either side, and then I glued a clove on the inside of each one of the petals so it looks like the center of a flower.  Finally, I glued some twine onto the top and voila! 

And there you have it!  A cute, cheap little ornament that smells nice and adds a nice touch to your tree.  Makes great little gifts or a fun craft with kids.