Pages

Saturday 3 August 2013

...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!

11 comments:

  1. Cool review Claire!

    I've not managed to get mine to come out of my glue gun - maybe it's not a good enough gun. But I have found that I can melt them using my heat gun in a tin foil cup - handy tip for anyone who doesn't have a melt pot ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is an intriguing product. Thanks for the the great tips and photos. Not sure I will jump in on these right off as I think they may be a bit too thick for mailing though I suppose one could experiment with just not filling the mold completely to get a 'thinner' piece.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Claire, When I first saw you post this I had to check it out right away :) . I had to order (along with other things - isn't that how it goes?!) from two different (U.S.) online shops to get both kinds of melting material. This looks like a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to experimenting. I know my daughter and her friends will enjoy giving this a try as well - they are very creative and I'm sure will come up with good ideas for the embellishments!

    Thanks so much for sharing your great tips. I am not sure if my heat gun is super hot but I'll check, and I love the idea of being able to re-melt and reuse the less than perfect pieces.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great review! I've been curious about these and this was informative. Question:are these mini glue sticks or regular?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Clare this post today was meant for ME! I bought one of the molds at A C Moore (a local bigbox craft store). No glue sticks available though. I have been wondering if the 'regular' glue sticks would work, but not tried as yet. I really appreciated the time you spent in detailing your efforts with this new technique. Were most helpful and enlightening when I do get the time to try this. Thanks so very much. Have fun.

    ReplyDelete
  6. 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. I didn't like melting the remainder in a tin, I only got one shape when I melted 7, the rest wouldn't come out before it got too hard and it started to smoke if I added more heat. I prefer to cut the shapes small and stick them back into the gun between adding new sticks. Thanks for the review!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Make sure your gun is the right size for the sticks - just realised mine takes fatter sticks which is fine these don't come out when I pull the trigger

    ReplyDelete
  8. Looks really amazing!

    ReplyDelete
  9. These look really fun! I love the extra oomph your little daisy adds to your card. The red roses are stunning, too! Fun stuff!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I have just ordered some of these melt sticks so this post has been very useful for me, I will look out for the molds, but I was going to use the molds that I already own and see how I get on with them first, I have so many I don't want to buy more if I don't need too, wish me luck!

    Jan x

    ReplyDelete
  11. Oh this looks like so much fun! I need to try these like YESTERDAY!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for taking the time to comment, :) I read them all and I appreciate you taking time to visit!