Have you ever used Sugru? This clay-like moldable glue dries to a flexible silicone rubber. We have used it to child-proof our computer, and to make fun rubber stamps with the kids’ names. This month, it was put to use repairing this fairy that kept losing the platform that it needed to stay upright. We had bought the fairy used, so it saw a lot of love before entering our home. It has also proved to have quite an adventurous personality in our home, which probably doesn’t help when it comes to keeping platforms in place. I had tried gluing the feet on in various ways without much success, so I pulled Sugru out.
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At first I tried to use Sugru to attach the feet to the grass platform. It would have worked, but it looked pretty bulky. So we decided to just make some wooden-shoe style shoes for our fairy. They are a little more bulky than the thinner shoes we were using to attach the grass, but the fairy can stand on his own now, and since he isn’t attached to grass any more he has a lot more freedom of movement for activities like flying. I had a little extra Sugru left over, and since it doesn’t keep very well once you open the pack I made the kids a couple of play dishes for their fairies. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to photograph those when I made them and now they are missing. Sugru does work well for simple modeling projects, too, though – you don’t have to attach it to something. It’s expensive, though, so in general I recommend the polymer clay we used in this post for modeling crafts.
Do you repair broken toys in your house? Have you ever used Sugru to fix something or solve a problem that you had?
MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
I’ve never heard of it but it sounds like really cool stuff! Is it kind of like a plastic clay? We will have to get some!!!
It is a modeling compound that dries into a rubber. It is more of a fix it / hack it material than a crafting material. Definitely useful to have on hand.
There have been a couple times after seeing one of your Sugru posts that I have thought of it when attempting to repair something. Maybe I should buy a bit to have on hand. How do the packs keep before being opened? Any temperature restrictions?
You want to keep it cool before it’s used – below 70 degrees. It also has a use-by date that is 13 months after manufacturing. Once the pack is open it doesn’t really keep at all – that is why I used up the leftover bits making little play dishes (and why each pack only contains a little bit). It is nice to have on hand for repairs. Sugru recommends storing their product in the fridge so that it keeps longer (if you do this, I think it will be good past its expiry date).
We don’t really, but that’s more because the kids don’t seem to care one way or the other. It bothers the heck out of me to see a toy that’s been chewed on by our dog though.
We haven’t done it with Sugru, but there was plenty of toy repairs here over years :)
I’ve never heard of Sugru, but what a great idea! I can already think of several toys this would come in handy with.