Monday, February 26, 2007

A brief history of adhesives

It occured to me that my life, like layers of carbon, can be organized by my preferred adhesives at the time.

1998- Freshman year of college I was obsessed with tape. Not your typical duct tape obsession, however. Various colored electrical tapes, painters tape, gaffers tape, clear Scotches, packing tapes, filled my drawer. You name it, I probably had it. My favorite was a silver metal tape. I made some wicked awesome stuff with that.

The Mod Podge Obsession of 1999- My roomie Kj and I made about a thousand journals with our mod podging prowess. What didn't we Mod Podge? I'm not sure when, but Kj at some point mod podged a spatula and some other kitchen untensils...most likely with photos of wheat fields in azure and goldenrod. I have not used the stuff since, actualy.

2001- Gromets and metal snaps. While not comonly known or used as an adhesive... I found many ways to build with these guys instead of tape or glue.

2002- Again, breaking the adhesive rules, this year was all about the sewing machine.

The next adhesive milestone was not until my friend Sarah's wedding in 2005 when Kj and I were asked to design her wedding favors. We decided to individually wrap boxes in lovely pink and brown papers and fill them with coordinating candies. Thanks to the popularity of "scrappin" everywhere, we found a lot of interesting adhesive choices to complete our mission of TV style wrapping our little beauties. My favorites were the tape dots... perfect for securing ribbons and tiny folds of paper. They were just the right size and made the job easy. I love those dots.

My current adhesive of choice is epoxy. I use it in my jewelry making. Super strong and easier to use than I had thought.

Good ol Elmers, however, is the all time ruler in my book.

1 comment:

Kj said...

I still have the spatulas. It's a triptych of a Vermeer landscape cut into three- a spatula, a spoon and a triangular cake server. I copied the idea from something I saw in a Houston boutique that was putting old film stills of Humphrey Bogart on spatulas. They were about thirty bucks. Mine were are $6 total project cost and I LOVE them.

I also liked the glue dots. But I thought you'd mention the emergence of double sided tape. I guess its been around forever, but Scrappin' seems to have made it universally accesible.

I would love you to blog about Scrappin, but it would probably insult too many people. Just the same, I'd love to hear it.