...New Mod Melts Review

 

Good afternoon!

I have a quick card for you - I wanted to try out the Mod Melts that we got at the store - I must admit that when I first saw these a few months back I could not wait to get my hands on them. The very idea of theme seemed like genius!

The idea is that you take the mod melt stick, which are shaped like glue sticks, and you pop them into your high temperature heat gun. The high temperature melts the stick and you release the resulting goo into a mold.

The take a few minutes to cool down and hey presto, you have a little 3D embellishment! The card above shows a daisy I made with the system.

The sticks come in packs of 16 and look like this:

There is a choice between white and clear.

 The molds come in 4 different designs so far, but I am sure that more will be added:

 

Flowers

 Nature

Ornamental

 Royal Icons

It is my understanding that these are now widely available in USA and so folks in USA might well be able to pick these up in their local store so for this reason we are only shipping these from our UK base at present. It is still possible to purchase these from us if you live in USA, but they will ship from UK and USA folks would probably find it more economical yo get them in USA. The are not yet widely available in UK though so we are excited to have a little batch for the store.

 

 Above you can see on of my fist attempts at a flower, and since I spent a good part of a day experimenting, I have a few little tips to share with you on using these things.

Just below you can see how it works, the stick goes into the back of the heat gun and you fill up the mold with the goo.

 

Once they have cooled down and you have removed them from the mold, you can colour them, below I have used copic markers to lightly colour the flowers and leaves in an ornamental square and below that my smallest daughter has coloured some roses for me using red nail varnish, which gives a lovely glossy finish. It's a great fun thing to experiment with.

Now the whole process is easy enough, and you very quickly get the hang of it, but one thing that did bother me at first was that I would find some air bubbles in my  pieces - see the nest and eggs below.

I was disappointed when I saw this nest and eggs come out malformed, I thought this meant that I had wasted the product as the nest looked unusable to me, but then I quickly realised that it might be possible to re use the malformed nest - I found that .

So my tips to help produce lovely embellishments are as follows:

• Make sure you are using a high temperature heat gun. If the goo is melted really well, it will find it's way into the detailed areas of the mold more easily.
• Don't be over-eager to squeeze the trigger, I found that if I rushed things, I got more air bubbles. Let the goo melt really well and aim for a slow and steady release of the goo into the mold.
• If you have a fine tip nozzle on your gun, you can use it to help the goo find it's way into the little nooks and crannies of the molds. Some molds are easier to fill than others.
• Don't over fill the molds either, not only will you waste the goo, but you will find that you may get little unwanted flanges of goo around the back of your shape, that you will have to pell off later.
• As you are filling your mold, stop momentarily and lift the mold about 2 inches off the surface and drop it straight back down again, this will help to bring the air bubbles towards the back of the shape and away from the detailed front. Do this really quickly as the goo dries up very quickly.
• If you make any shapes that have lots of air bubbles or which are malformed, keep them clean in a small polybag, I discovered that some folks are able to melt them down in something like a Ranger Melting Pot. It may well be possible to melt down your 'mistakes' and re-use the goo - this is something I intend to try, so when I do this I will post a review of how that goes. ED - Genius tip from Craftilicious - use a heat gun and a tin foil cup to re-melt the goo if your shape comes out wrong!
• Another Super Tip, this time from Rebecca - "I've found if I under fill I often get missed bits around the edges. If I remelt just the very top (which will be the bottom) then the blowing air from the heat gun pushes the melted plastic towards the edges and voila, the edge are now filled. This works especially well with the leaves which I like to very under fill to get a thinner leaf but kept missing the tip."

In the top pic you can see that I have overfilled these top shapes. The goo is starting to spread out at the back. In the pic below you can see that the fill is much better, less goo is used and there is not so much overspill to contend with.

Hope this helps!