My Beloved Glue Bottle

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A few weeks ago I joined the Etsy Bloggers team. One of the requirements is that each member participate in one "carnival" per month. (There is a new carnival available every 2 weeks.) That just means you publish on your blog, an entry on one of the two topics offered - and post the link on the Etsy Bloggers boards for the other members to follow.

This month I'm writing about my favorite tool, my beloved tiny glue bottle. As you can see the top is plugged by a stainless steel straight pin so that tells you how tiny the opening is. This is what allows me to glue the teeny tiny pieces that I work with, beads too.

If you think (hope) it's not 100% necessary for the pin to be stainless steel, you'd be wrong. I lost the pin once, so I used a regular straight pin as an emergency replacement. And had to deal with rusty watery glue. Not good. So I bought an entire box of stainless steel pins, so I'm good to go should I lose one again. (It seems kind of amazing to me that I've only lost the pin once considering I've been using the bottle almost every day for a few years!)

(I use PVA, which is a thin, strong white glue. That's a question I get asked a lot.)

I was in a quilling Yahoo Group a couple of years back and learned of a company called Quilled Creations so I bought some supplies; paper, tweezers and the glue bottle, so I could give quilling a try. Surprisingly the package arrived the next day so I checked the return address and it was Fairport, NY! I'd been making the mandalas with the PVA glue poured on a piece of paper and applied with a toothpick. So I tried the PVA in the glue bottle and it was fantastic. Life changing, I dare say.

I've since bought a few more bottles - to use with paint - and to give to my friends who have been helping me with the gluing steps for my business. Alli Bartkowski, the owner, allows me to pick up my orders at her house, just a couple of miles from mine. (Her work and her products are all wonderful - check out her site. I just noticed today that I'm on her testimonial page!)

One of the tips Alli offers is when using the glue bottle, store it upside down in a glass on a piece of wet sponge to keep it from drying out. I found this shot glass I scarfed from Simon to be just the perfect size. (I eventually stopped using the wet sponge, doesn't seem to make a difference and it was more trouble than it was worth.)

On a side note, I remember when Simon bought this shot glass. It says VT on the side, for Vermont. One year Gretchen and I took the boys on one of our little trips to the Adirondacks. That year we took the ferry across Lake Champlain into Vermont to spend the day in Burlington.

On the ferry, Simon desperately wanted to buy a shot glass as a souvenir. He was way under age for drinking (he was maybe 14 or 15) and I was convinced that buying that shot glass would be a slippery slope into drinking. Even I could sort of tell I was overboard on the subject so I got over it and let him buy it. I even bought him 1 or 2 more when I traveled out of town in subsequent years.

He never developed the shot glass collection he thought he would. And while he is still under the drinking age for a few more months, he appears to be a responsible drinker. For a teenage boy especially. This could be a subject for a whole 'nother entry but my observation is that kids today are far more responsible than my generation was 100 years ago.

So yeah, that glue bottle is indispensable to me! I'm glad I have some spares in stock. I can't imagine life without it.

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