 Hi everybody it's Sam at Mixed Up Craft, thank you for watching today. So if you use a glue gun then you will find this video I think quite useful. You may already know some of the hints and tips that I'm going to share but there's always new people watching and new people starting to craft so I figured it would be a good one to share. I use a glue gun pretty much every day, I usually when I come into my craft room I would turn my glue gun on so it's always ready and it's just something that I find very useful to use when I'm applying my embellishments, any kind of ribbons or just other materials to my paper crafts that I feel need that extra stick and I just love the convenience of how fast and quick it is to use and dry. So I have my glue gun here now this is the one that you've seen me use for quite some time but I've also recently got this new cordless one which I'm really enjoying as well and I do well I did have another really good one which was a blue one which I picked up very inexpensive from Amazon but I've actually given that one to my mum but I will link these three below because these are the ones that I've used these are the ones that I would recommend and that I really enjoy so the Cizix one here is a lovely little glue gun it's obviously all plugged in here now this isn't the original stand I did have the original stand but unfortunately I dropped that one but you can pick these up on their own they're very inexpensive again off of Amazon I just cut a little silicon mat here and I stuck that in there so that I can easily pick off any glue that does drip there's just a handy little drip tray so this one does come with a stand but you'll find with most glue guns when you have a wire when you stand them with the stand that comes with it you have to kind of get them positioned but they may just fall over quite easily so I would just pop the stand away and pop it into one of these little holsters again it was about $2.99 very inexpensive so no matter what glue gun you've got if you don't have a stand and you want to get one then get one of these because they're great now this one here I picked up from Amazon so obviously heating up now it's nice and hot so it's got a USB to charge it you get this little silicon mat just for any bits that do drip but I find it doesn't drip and this one here the the dripping is when I initially turn it on and it's any kind of glue that was left on the nozzle it's just kind of falling off they don't I find these two do not drip as I'm using them now with this one here I thought it'd be a good example to show you when you're starting to get down to the end of your glue I recently came across this fantastic hack on TikTok and I had to share it with you also but when it's like this and you find that you start to lose the that you know it's not pushing it through anymore but you can still see the glue stick there some of you may know this I didn't if you just heat the end of the new glue stick and then if you just slide it through and let it attach to that one give it a few seconds just to grab and then that will pull through now without you having to actually physically put it in and push it through yourself so now you can just carry on with your craft and you've got that nice strong grip again with the glue and it flows really nicely top tip with your glue guns make sure they're nice and hot the hotter the glue the better it's going to work and it will spread thinner and you just obviously take a couple of seconds to dry but you will get a much better application when you let your glue gun heat up properly don't feel as soon as it starts to kind of like the glue maybe start to fall off it's ready to go it'd be quite maybe hard to squeeze it's because it's still not quite hot enough so just give it a chance and once it is very hot that little trigger will move very very quickly as you saw there that's coming out really easily another little tip is probably self some silicon little finger protectors these ones here I got from the brand stick to anything you get them in a little pack going very inexpensive but it's great if you're adding embellishments or something and you need to apply you know some pressure you don't want the heat from the glue pop the silicon little protector on and you can you know literally touch that glue now and go right into there you get a warmth that will come off but you do not get any anything that will burn you and this is all on that silicon mat so once that's all cooled off completely that will come you know I'll be able to peel that straight off you can see that piping hot glue and it's not causing me any trouble at all and then once that does start to cool which it is now I can just just peel it all away like so because it's the same material as that there you just got a little ball of glue so that's those two which I've already had but when you get this gun you get a pack here and these ones are more like I guess your rubber gloves that you may use for doing washing up or something so you can see there how those go on you do get quite a lot in there so they're going to last you a long time but that will work the same way and again you know I can kind of put my finger in that glue there and apart from a slight warmth that you're getting it's not going to burn you at all and again once that's cooled down it will just all peel off again like so it's a little bit left on there but I can take that off so that's what you get there so yeah do invest in some little you know something to protect your fingers and you know that will make a load of difference also in terms of kind of looking after your guns so with this one here if I I'm going to turn that one off now and this one again you can see it just comes out really nicely so I am really enjoying this one like I said little USB to charge it and it's a great little tool when it comes to cleaning the glue at the end what you might find helpful is some kitchen foil here screw it up like so and then you'll be able to clean the nozzle of your glue gun you want to do this while it's still kind of warm that mine's kind of built up over time but it will just help take away any of that glue I've got kind of Christmas gold glitter glue stick on here and so on but you can see that just cleans it all off now I can get that even cleaner which I'll do afterwards if you have any kind of grease you can use like a lip balm anything like that I have a little one here again that's boiling hot so I don't really want to put it on yet but if you just get a little bit of the grease and just when it's cooled down pop it around the end and it will stop any build up of glue going you know attaching itself onto the end of the the nozzle there of the glue gun so it's another helpful tip if you've got a silicon kind of caps that go around some of the glue guns then you won't need to use that because you can just peel off the glue but these ones here this one here has got plastic all the way down to this part and then it's got the metal so I just clean that with my foil or just pick it off when it's just calling so it's warm enough for you to be able to touch and still peel off but you do want to try and do that I go to like put everything away it's just give it a little bit of a cling because it will stop that build up but adding a little bit of grease will really help as well so that's it just a couple of little tips and tricks which will hopefully help you use your glue gun better and enjoy it maybe and I know there's lots of other great ones out there on the market these are just the ones that I've got and that I would recommend to use I've also used some that are just not very good so it is a trial and error because some that one person may really enjoy someone else you know may not so it's all down to personal preference but the cordless ones I'm really liking there's a lot on the market there's some that will also charge when you pop them in back into a holster so you know it's a bit more expensive but you might want to go for that one but for what I need and this one is working just well for me at the moment so yeah thanks for watching and I'll be back very soon with another tutorial bye