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My New Favorite Thing: My hot-glue gun

By Shaine Feinbberg | Issue #22

I will tell you what I love. I love my hot-glue gun. I bought a hot-glue gun maybe three, four years ago. It was on sale and I thought, okay, I can use this. It wasn't until early last fall that I actually pulled it out of the plastic tub that houses my hammer, nails, and other unused tools.

I was at the tail end of a very deep depression in which I rarely left the house. To stay busy, I would hunt through my cupboards and closets for something new to do. During one of these scavenger hunts, I found it: the glue gun, neatly wrapped in its own white cord. It was great looking--a red plastic body with a glinting silver nose.

I started slow, just gluing buttons to colored paper. But it didn't take long for me to spread my wings. I made snow globes. I jazzed up plain bags with fabric or paper dolls. I made lots of interesting mail that I sent to friends. Add hot glue to something and it somehow, magically, becomes cooler. I realized this when I began to hot-glue objects together--say, a sumo wrestler figurine and a piece of driftwood. It doesn't have to make sense. It made me feel like an artist.

I'd have a buddy over and instead of having to talk, I'd pull out the gun and we'd sit around and glue stuff. It was during one of these sessions that I took gunning to the next level. I was hanging out with my friend Dustin and picked up the blank book in front of me. I started to write about my feelings of sadness, then started gluing. By the end of the night I had the first in a series of what my friends have since dubbed Sad Books. --Shaina Feinberg

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