Sew Can Do: Mod Melts

Today I'm sharing my experience using Mod Melts products to make resin-style embellishments and how to make your very own knock-off versions using hot glue instead (for a fraction of the price!). We're gonna DIY a DIY product - how meta is that?

So what the heck are Mod Melts? Made by Plaid (the makers of Mod Podge), Mod Melts are meltable sticks to use in your hot glue gun and melt into small-sized corresponding silicone molds. These make resin-style embellishments for to use in various crafts, scrapbooking, jewelry, hair accessories, etc. They started making the rounds on many a craft blog this year as a hot new crafting product.

I was really intrigued by them - especially because you could paint them using a variety of finishes to make them custom colored, metallic, glittery, etc. No more buying big assortments of resin shapes just to get a few in a certain color or shape. And just making what you need, when you need it, sounded good.

I had to wait until they finally came to my local craft store to buy some (I don't have the spare money or time to fly myself cross country to the big craft supply shows to get preview access to stuff like this). I'd wanted to get the sea glass clear sticks, but all that was left was the white. There were a few cute molds to choose from, but still kind of limited.

The concept was pretty simple. Just heat a stick in a high temp glue gun and trigger the melted goo into the molds. After 10 minutes they're hardened and ready to paint. I learned you have to work super fast - the stuff sets in seconds, so it's a bit tricky to get into the little crevices in the detailed shapes and to avoid air bubbles. Opposite to the directions (that said to start in the middle), I started in the nooks and crannies after a few dud results.

They started turning out better (although nearly impossible to get completely bubble free), but I noticed I went through a lot of the material pretty quick. 16 mini sticks cost about $6.99 and each mold was $5.99. 4 sticks made about 2 dozen pieces, but obviously not all turned out useable, so it does add up.

The big surprise for me was that they weren't super hard like resin shapes, more rubbery, like dried hot glue. And that got me thinking...why not try that?

So I did. And guess what? It worked just as well, if not better. I just used my high temperature sticks & glue gun. First plus was that the glue took a little longer to start to set, so it was easier to fill in the shapes and knock out any air bubbles. Second was that it didn't take a full 10 minutes before it could be popped out - I did about 5 minutes, so I could get painting right away.

Left: Mod Melt nest, Right: hot glue nest

And they painted up great - I actually noticed the paint coverage seemed better on the hot glue shapes. Can you spot a major difference between them?

Left: Mod Melt material, Right: Plain Old Hot Glue

I also noticed painting with many coats and using textures like glitter helped hide imperfections on both the Melts & glue varieties.

Here's plain matte acrylic paint on Mod Melts from a Mod Melts mold. Ok results, but not quite as nice a finish:

I also noticed the molds weren't all that different than any other shallow silicone molds. The point of being able to make your own custom embellishments seems kind of negated when everyone is using the same 4 molds to make shapes, so I tried using different silicone molds too. I used this folk design fondant mold, which had a bigger assortment of shapes and more varying sizes:

The results were just as good with the glue.

Hot glue molded leaf

I made a bunch from this mold with the Mod Melts sticks too:

Mod Melts material with a Wholeport silicone mold

Of course there's probably some proprietary ingredients in the Mod Melts that makes them last longer or maybe their molds have slightly more details, but so far I'm just as happy with my hot glue & favorite mold combos. And price-wise, the regular glue sticks work out to be about 1/4 of the cost, so I can go crazy making embellishments and still keep it cheap. I thought this little discovery was worth sharing, so you can go DIY Mod Melts too!