Ode to the Hot Glue Gun

Yes, it is a bit dangerous! Hot glue is like melted cheese, it is burning hot and sticky. So be careful.
The benefits outweigh the risks. The glue is grabby, except on dusty stones and suchlike. It holds: it makes do with bad joints, or almost no joint at all.

It is blobby, when needed, welding bits together which would never stay otherwise.

It is quick too. Nice. Quick, like right now! It sticks and things are stuck. Clamping? Rarely. Waiting ‘til next week for the next stage. No! Pinning balsa wood; no.

Kids are impatient; creativity is impatient; I am impatient. Glue guns meet the need for speed: for action and results.

Hot glue is stronger than you might think too. Can you make big stuff? Yes, you can:

Parents aren’t always so keen on the glue gun. With energetic youngsters and enthusiastic art therapists in cahoots is there any limit to the stuff that can be churned out with remarkable rapidity and surprising size? Well…….

Limited only by available materials and the size of a: doors, b: the car to take it home in, and c: where on earth are we going to put all this stuff?

I love cardboard, glue guns love cardboard. Hospitals usually have quite a lot of cardboard lying about too. Plentiful and cheap. Raid the big recycling bin outside.

Want to make a beautiful big giraffe? Armature glued together in minutes, belly from card glued into place and Modroc sculpting underway in no time at all. Strong and striking.

Viking longboat? Model theatre with working trap door? Wooden racing cars? Barcelona Football Stadium? Miniature fish tank with model magic starfish, octopus and seaweed….a house on stilts? Stick shells on things… stick things on things.

Using those art straws that have been around for a decade in the cupboard, finally.
How did I manage before?

PVA, balsa glue, a staple gun, hammer and panel pins, masking tape, and even solvent free Bostik (is it even still a glue?) It is true that these methods provided opportunities for frustration, anger, fury, disappointment, and, at best, patience and ingenuity in ways now avoidable. And that was just me. The creative process usually brings opportunities for those experiences in any case. But with the hot glue gun there is a chance to realise a client’s imaginative vision more vividly, to push boundaries of what the materials will do, sometimes to fail better, but to create bigger and better too.

Michael Atkins trained in Sheffield (Claremont Crescent), graduated 1998 and worked in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in the NHS from then on, more or less, until August 2015. Now no longer registered, no longer employed, no longer a member of British Association of Art Therapists. Still creative, still playing, still have sense of humour, and looking forward to the future.