DIY hot glue gun holder

Published by Manning on February 23rd, 2020

Here’s one of the dumbest and coolest things I’ve ever made! It’s my very own DIY hot glue gun holder, made out of paper maché and other junk.

If you’ve used a small hot glue gun like this you know they (usually) have a little foldable metal wire stand that’s completely infuriating; it gets in the way when you’re gluing stuff and it’s a pain to unfold it and set the hot glue gun down while you’re working quickly. Even worse, the cord sticking out the back of the glue gun makes it not want to stand up correctly, so the thing falls over all the time. And whether the stand works or not, the weight of cord makes the glue gun wanna slide around and fall off of your work space.

So I made this stand! Few things in life have made me happier than this thing! This stand lets me quickly lay the glue gun down while I’m working, so it falls right into place and doesn’t move. I did two things to make it impossible for it to slide away: I put a lot of pennies in the bottom for weight, and I put a layer of craft foam on the back to make it super friction-y. The stand also catches any drips of hot glue that might come out after you’ve set it down. I just break ’em off once they’ve cooled down.

I didn’t take any pictures of this thing while I was making it, but it was a really simple process. I made the basic shape for the stand out of a few layers of foam board; I just traced a loose shape around the glue gun and worked with that. I covered the whole thing in paper maché to make it nice and solid and stable. I glued two popsicle sticks in there where the glue gun sits so the hot plastic and metal don’t touch the paper maché and the (somewhat meltable) foam board beneath.

Like I mentioned, I then glued a bunch of pennies on the underside of the base for weight, and then I traced and cut out a layer of craft foam to glue over the pennies. The rubbery craft foam provides a tremendous amount of friction so the stand can’t slide around even when the heavy cord is hanging off of my workspace. And that’s it! An easy two-afternoon project, and it’s made my life so much easier. Once I had this thing, I removed the wire stand that was on the glue gun and tossed it! Good riddance!

Tags: diy, glue, hot glue gun

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