One of the things I love about fabric is the ability to manipulate the look by dyeing, discharging, and painting. You can take your fabric crafts to “the next level” by adding foils, flocking and glitter- but for that, you need adhesives specially made for their ability to remain sticky when dry.
So today I’m going to compare three types of “sticky” glues- ones that remain tacky when dried- to see which works best on fabric crafts. And to see which- if any- can make it through the wash!
Our candidates today are Transfer Adhesive (part of the Martha Stewart Paints line by Plaid, Renaissance Foil Adhesive by Delta Creative, and The Best Glue Ever by ScrapPerfect.
Here’s a quick photo of how the adhesives look when wet- all of them appear milky or white when wet- but only the Martha Stewart Transfer Adhesive actually has a white pigment in it.
Here is the first swatch test using mylar-backed foils from the Martha Stewart Paints line by Plaid:
As you can see, the stamp image didn’t fair as well as the stenciling, probably because it’s harder to get a nice, thick coat of adhesive on the stamp. I found that will all my swatches, the adhesives bled through to the back of the fabric when stamping. (After all, the act of stamping kind of smooshes the adhesive into the fibers.)
However, in the stamping samples I kind of felt that the MS Transfer Adhesive under-performed compared to the other two. I thought all three of the adhesives worked well with the stencil/foil combination.
Now on to the “Sheet” flocking (again, which comes from the Martha Stewart Paints line from Plaid.)
In this instance, you see that we have some of the same issues in how the adhesive is applied with the foam stamps. Actually the Renaissance Foil adhesive worked the best with the foam stamps and flocking. But on the whole, the MS Transfer Adhesive and the Best Glue Ever both performed really well with the stencils. The MSTA might have a slight advantage here- the white background really did help in making the color of the flocking seem brighter and appear to have better coverage.
Lastly, let’s look at the Glitter Sheets (you guessed it- from the Martha Stewart Decorative Paints Line. What can I say? I saw them at Michael’s and coundn’t resist!)
When it comes to the glitter sheets, the hands- down winner is the Best Glue Ever. While the MSTA was meant to work with the glitter sheets, I found that it just didn’t have enough tack to pull the glitter off of the backing sheet. (I’ll be doing a review of the foils, flocking, and glitter sheets soon.) And here the white background only accentuated how much space didn’t get covered. At least with the Best Glue Ever- our runner up in this one- if the glitter didn’t transfer, it just looked a little mottled. The Renaissance foil just didn’t work well at all with the glitter sheets.
Now for the big, big question- did any of them survive the wash?? If you want to use any of these products on a wearable, it’s something you’d want to know. So I ran all of my samples through the wash on “delicate”- cold wash/cold rinse- and low spin speed.
As you can see, all three adhesives survived a cold-water wash. (I find this very exciting!) This really opens the door for adding glitter, foils, and flocking to gently-worn wearables! So why there is no clear “winner,” I can say with some certainty that if you want to use Martha Stewart Transfer Adhesive, it’s really good with the flocking and foils….and if you want to use glitter, maybe just use the Best Glue Ever if you already have it on hand.
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Amy says
Wow Jenny-You’re the Bobby Flay Throwdown of Crafts! How fun is that?
What I found cool is that the Best Glue Ever did so well on all your tests, being outperformed by specialty adhesives in some cases while superior to them in others. And it also works well in so many other different applications, too. With ScraPerfect’s reliable Best Glue Ever as a “go-to” glue, crafters have a choice of buying specialty adhesives only if they want to. That’s a money, time and stress saver.
Sheila says
Hi Jenny- did you ever try the martha stewart foiling sheets on fabric? (these, from micheals: http://www.michaels.com/Foil-Transfer-Sheets/cp0503,default,pd.html )
Jenny says
Yes, Sheila, those are th foils I used in this post. 🙂