The one thing that I noticed almost straight away when I started “playing” with my Melting Pot was how brittle the pieces I made were, if I dropped them, they invariably ended up in bits on the floor, which wasn’t that brilliant, especially as I had it in mind to make Christmas tree decorations, tags and perhaps some pendants, and for that, they needed to be a little more robust.
So, then I did me some research and “discovered” UTEE F-L-E-X, a resilient resin that makes Ultra Utee more durable and stronger. Wooo hoooo, I thought, I’ll get me and Marc some of that ……. only to discover, when I tried to buy it, that it had been discontinued!!!!! Aghhhhhh
More research followed …. and I stumbled across a couple of links that suggested adding a small section of a glue stick to your Utee when you are melting it ….. well, it would have been rude not to try, wouldn’t it?
And would you believe it, it worked! In fact I found the Utee a little easier to pour as well.
I poured the melted Utee and glue stick mix onto my heat resistant mat and then “cut” into it with a plastic cutter (another experiment, which also worked, as I thought you could only use metal cutters with hot Utee)
When cool the star and the blob (above) had a degree of flexibity that Utee alone doesn’t have, and then …. I threw both on the floor with a little force, and both survived! And when I deliberately tried to snap the “blob”, it certainly felt more resistant, although it did break eventually. So from here on in, I think it’s just a matter of more experimenting with how much glue stick to add for maximum strength and flexibility.
I also tried stamping into the Utee ….. not so successful ….. but only because I pressed down far too hard!!!
