Recently I read about someone wondering if a heat tool can get old. Of course there were alot of responses to this question and no one had a definitive answer. So I thought I'd investigate it a bit. I do own 4 heat guns and have access to 1 other one. My oldest one was bought back in the 1980's. Two of the ones I own are the blue Darice. I've had these the longest. The Darice is about 9" long and has 320w. These both take a bit of time to heat up..maybe it's their age?? LOL
The 1 heats a tad quicker than the other and both do an ok job once heated up.
The other one I have is a newer Recollections one that I bought just a few months ago mainly because it's Pink and Black! I'm a sucker for pretty! It really doesn't work any faster than the one I got in the 80's (1 of the blue Darice ones). This is a bit longer than the Darice measuring a bit over 9.5" and it's only 300w. Maybe that's why it doesn't work any faster! It too needs to heat up for a bit and the length of it makes it a bit awkward to hold. Who would have thought a half inch would make such a big difference. So pretty ISN'T always better. NEWER isn't either in this case. I find I let my pink Recollections one just sort of sit and look pretty while reaching for my old ones.
Recently I bought a Martha Stewart heat gun. I have to say it has a bit more sturdy feel to it. If that makes sense??? This one is a shorty being only about 7.5" long. It fits perfectly in my hand and is not awkward. I might even like this better than the Darice which really fit nicely in my hands. This one is also a whoppin' 350w. I found No need for heat up with this one. I had decided for this review to use the heat gun as it's suppose to be used and not just leave it running until I was ready to use it like I do with the others. It is a quick embosser. I'm kind of liking this one. It also has an industrial cord. I don't know anything about cord thickness but I would assume a thicker cord is better???
Two heat guns that I do not own but have used before are the Stampin Up one and the Marvy Uchida one.
The Marvy one has 360w so heat wise it is quite close to the Martha Stewart one. I have only been able to locate these on line at Amazon and directly from Marvy Uchida. Reviews on both sites averaged only 3 stars. The bad reviews were primarily about the tool stops working after a short time. The one I tried looked like an older model and seemed to work fine for me. Personally I've only used it on 2 separate projects consisting of 6 cards each so I'm not very knowledgeable to recommend this heating gun.
The Stampin Up gun reminds me alot of the Darice one. They look similar to me and feel about the same in my hands. I tried to find the wattage on line but nothing out there that I found told me the wattage of the current Stampin Up one. Many places referred to the old one that was 350w and there were quite a few remarks of disappointment that Stampin up reduced their watts by lowering it by 50w on all their new heat guns.
I am not sure if I was trying a new or old heat gun but it seemed to need warming up to emboss.
I have to admit that I keep my heat guns hanging in a non-traditional way. I have an old wooden barrel that I use for trash in my craft room and hang the heat guns on the rim. I also turn on a heat gun and let it run while I'm working on the desk doing the EP. (embossing powder) So by the time I'm ready to heat set, my gun has been running for at least 5 min. I have never had a heat gun that has gotten too hot. The only time I have scorched the paper is when I was nearly touching the paper with the heat gun. (something your not suppose to do anyway! hahaha)
Someday I may try out the Tim Holtz one but for now. I'm loving my Martha Stewart one! No I'm not going to get rid of the other "Not so Great" heating tools after all you never know when you need less heat right? Or maybe I'm just a collector of old but still working tools! LOL YEP....that's it! That's my reason and I'm sticking to it! hahaha
Later
HAPPY CARDING!
Just wanted to share this totally adorable gift idea I had the grandkids make for Christmas presents this year. These plates are "ALL" over the Internet. There must be at least a dozen different pinterest pages that have a bunch posted. So we decided to try them ourselves.
The kids had so much fun. My 3 year old grandson was the funniest. As we were painting his foot he just says "It Gween Ha Ha". He just giggled away. My daughter-in-law and I couldn't help but laugh too!
Doing the feet wasn't as easy as we thought.....painted feet slip easily on glass plates! LOL But doing the lights around the plates was easy. The kids used their fingertips to dot color lights all around. The little one had a bit of help though. We then showed my granddaughter how to connect the lights by drawing the string. Top left photo showed we'd had to try and contain my grandsons enthusiasm! LOL
We used glass paints from the craft section at Michael's and a glass paint marker to draw the string for the finger tip lites and for the writing. These then had to cure for 4 days before heat setting in an oven at 325 degrees for 30 minutes. The results beautiful and they are going to make perfect gifts! This is just one of a couple upcoming crafts I'll be doing with the kids.
So for this post I will close with..........
HAPPY CRAFTING!!!!!!
Oh my goodness I can't believe that it's been nearly a month since my last post!!! I'm going to call this my "CATCH UP TUESDAY". There has been so much going on over here. Mostly colds sweeping through the household and spreading on to the grandkids and into their homes. :( Then of course the week of Thanksgiving, being grandkid free, I had a ton of errands and though I did not participate in the Black Friday madness I did do alot of Internet shopping which of course made my fingers achy. LOL Ok maybe a bit of an exaggeration. Anyway "Onward and Forward"!! Cards cards cards!!!
So June and I got together one evening and made 2 really awesome cards I believe both cards are C.A.S.E.'d. The pine cone one was from Dawns Stamping thoughts. I didn't have the Stampin up set that she used but a quite similar one from Hero Arts. But we did the same technique. Which was to versa mark the entire card and emboss it with sparkly embossing powder. Beautiful! I wanted to make more but......life happened! hahaha.
The snowflake one, I believe June C.A.S.E.'d from Stampin up. If I'm wrong I'm sure she'll tell me! LOL The stamp set is from Stampin Up and I love it. I just might have to borrow this one from her.
I had then put together a couple more styles of paper bag cards. I made enough of the pieces for our card group to assemble during one of our gatherings before Thanksgiving.
The first one I really like the simplicity of. I got the Santa's at an Antique store in Door County back in September. I had no clue as to what I was going to use them with and came up with this.
The next one is similar to the one I posted in the post entitled Paper Bag Card. The card group was just shown this example as we instead made the first card listed in the above post.
Then a few of the ladies brought supplies for us all to make the following. Awesome!!!
I love the size of the Snowflake card! And the vintage Children on the red and white card just screamed "Stamp more of these"!!! So I did to do later. Love them all!!
Ok I think I'm caught up. Now I need to start addressing envelopes and get all these beauties into the mail!! But first....I think I need to get more Christmas shopping done!
Till later (and hopefully it won't be a month later haha)
HAPPY CARDING!
