The other day, I was diligently working on the odangos (buns) for a Sailor Moon wig, and it was… painful. The first attempt, the ball was too small, the second attempt I had used entirely too much hot glue, because I had to put some glue in there, wait for it to cool enough to stick my finger in there to hold the hair down,  and then if it wasn’t enough hot glue to hold the hair down, I had to add even more. I started getting frustrated, because my fingers were pretty badly burned (it comes with making costumes, I think) and so I tried to work quicker, which just made it worse. I gave up for the night and went online to try and find some kind of solution to help me either be able to work quicker with the hot glue, or to minimize my burns.

What I found was review after review of Hot Glue Gun Helper– a newish invention by two craft television hosts who were also tired of hot glue burns, and hot glue sticking everywhere it shouldn’t.

Of course, I immediately ordered it, set aside the odangos until it got here, and worked on Sailor Moon’s hair pins instead (always work on something different if you get frustrated or run out of materials for one project! Efficiency is key!). They got here rather quickly, about a week (but I did order on a Sunday, so… four days isn’t too bad!) and I was pretty excited to rip it open and get to work.

The kit comes with:

A craft mat, which is heat resistant, stain resistant, it’s 14″ by 11″, and your hot glue (or resins, or pretty much any type of glue) will not stick to the mat. It also rolls up for easy storage!

Three finger caps, at different sizes for different fingers, which are heat resistant and nonrestrictive,  and the hot glue won’t stick to them, either. Perfect for holding hair down onto a foam ball to make an odango! (Or for holding down ribbon, fabric, paper, anything that could get hot glue onto your fingers and possibly burn you!)

A paddle, which is good for applying small drops of glue, and for using as a soft press.

The press wand, and the tipped end is used to smear hot glue, blunt end is used as a heavy duty press, and it’s good for using with large amounts of glue.

Tweezers, used to place small items (I could see this working well with gems and small detail items), and it offers more control when placing small items.

The only thing I’ve used this kit for so far is the odangos (for holding down the hair, and more precise application of the hot glue, as well as using the mat as a landing pad for the glue gun), but we use hot glue all the time and this kit is going to be getting a ton of use. We also used the mat today for resin, and laying the hair down that we had to resin (more on that later) when it was still a little tacky but not enough to hurt anything, and it didn’t stick at all.

Now for the giveaway! We know that pretty much every cosplayer works with hot glue at some point, and your hot glue gun should always be taken along with you to conventions for quick fixes, and so we want to give one lucky ready a Hot Glue Gun Helper kit, a large dual temp glue gun, and some glue sticks to go along with it. All you have to do is leave a comment saying what you most use hot glue for in your costumes! Contest ends at 12:01 AM on Saturday, March 12th. Sorry, the contest is now over! (Don’t forget to like us on Facebook, too!)

You can also buy the kit here (though I got mine on Etsy, right before HSN put it up) and it also comes with a clear storage bag to keep it all together (if you get it from HSN).

Here’s a preview picture from the upcoming Sailor Moon tutorial of the inside of the finished buns:

Looks much cleaner! The finger cups made it possible to squirt a bit of glue inside the ball, then quickly push and flatten down the hair into it with no problem. Easy!