My Current Favorite Gluing Solution

[Paula Beardell Krieg]

Glue is applied with dots or thin lines near but not on the edges. Come back later to this picture and caption to remind yourself. Glue goes on thinly and does not need to cover the whole surface.

Before I get into this post, I have to say THANK YOU to all the people who ordered from my tee-shirt collection after reading my last post. It was such fun seeing the orders roll in. I ordered a zinnia tee for myself. I especially liked that someone ordered a baseball cap with the “Starling with Attitude” graphic. Now back to the-gluing-topic…

Adhesives are always a problem. Whether it’s a classroom of children, a workshop for adults, or at my own desk, I’m always trying to figure out what method of applying glue would work best for my purposes. By design, most of the processes that I teach require some but not much gluing. I am quite deliberate about adhesives. There is nothing like inadequate glue-planning that can sabotage a project so completely.

For years glue sticks had been my best solution. Taking care of them has always been like a ritual. Time consuming, but necessary. What annoys me the most about glue sticks is how much plastic is thrown away each time as stick has become exhausted. Next objection is how often the cap gets stuck to the cylinder.



Heads up, there is one chunky plastic dental syringe, which cost about $5 for 5, that’s needed in this workflow, but it’s not used in the actual gluing. These aren’t scary, just unfamiliar. Please don’t let this bit scare you off.

I am sort of bad at using glue. I try to be careful, and even though now I get less glue in unwanted places, I still sometimes forget to clean my brushes, and I’m always aware of wasting the glue I’ve poured out but not entirely used up. I’m not going to entirely stop using my UHU glue sticks or my flat brushes with PVA, but now I am using a different adhesive solution most of the time. I am very excited about this.

If you’ve been taking classes from me over the past few years, you’ve heard me tout Bearly Craft Glue, so it may surprise you that this is NOT what I’m going to be talking about. My infatuation with the Bearly Glue is over. What changed my mind about Bearly is that when the needle nose tip that I like so much clogs up it is very hard to get the glue to flow again. I am genetically predisposed to letting glue tips clog up.

After a particularly frustrating moment with my five different dispensers of the Bearly I decided to look around for other needle nose solutions.

The result is that I am completely hooked on what I’m recommending today. Note that this is solution isn’t for the faint-hearted or for the person who only does occasional gluing. Art teachers, workshop facilitators (especially if the numbers are large, like when I worked with 100+ people at MoMath) may love this as much as I do. It’s also what I use in my own studio these days since my systems are all set up.



The simple way to present this is just to say I buy the” Needle Tip Glue Applicator Bottles” then fill them with the glue of my choice. This is so much easier said than done. At the moment this link to 18PCS Precision Needle Tip Glue Applicator Bottles, 6 Color 30ML/1 OZ Fine Needle Tip Squeeze Bottle with Mini Funnel for DIY Paint Paper Quilling Craft Glue Ink Liquid Acrylic Painting, YEAJOIN works. I use the 10 and 30 ml sizes.

Full disclosure: I am not affiliated financially with any of these products on this page.

I’ve made a video (at bottom of post) which explains the process for you visually, but here’s the gist of it.

I uncap and line up my 10 and 30 ml bottles near the sink with my counter tops protected.


Gallon container of Jade, funnel, refillable medium glue container, tapered plastic syringe, and the final little needle-nose glue container.

Nearby is a medium sized (225ml/7.6 oz) Elmers Glue-All bottle that has been filled, via a funnel, with my glue of choice, which is some sort of archival PVA.

Even for classroom use, I use the good stuff, which is about 3x as expensive as the next best choice, only because it’s easier for me to use a bookbinder’s grade of PVA for everything than to keep track of two grades of glue in my workshop. That said, the less expensive option, the Elmer’s Glue-All used in a needle tip applicator is a fine choice for the classroom.

The medium sized bottle is used to pour glue into the plastic syringe.

This is not just ANY plastic syringe. It’s a “Wisdom Teeth Syringe, 5 Pack Irrigation Dental Syringes with Measure Scale & Curved Tip.” It’s the tip that is so important, not because it’s curved but because it’s tapered, Note, you need to snip off a bit of the end because it tapers just a bit too much. The only way to get glue in these bottles is to use a syringe that lets air leave the bottle as glue as injected. Little by little, each bottle is filled and recapped. I store the bottles upside-down.



If a tip gets clogged, I have regular and long straight pins with me at all times, A few swipes into the needle-nose gets things running again. Do not store the pins in the needle nose, as pins can get fused into place.

While this all sounds like a big production it is so much easier in so many ways once the glue gets handed out.. No brushes to clean, no glue knocked over, no run-away blobs of glue, stuck glue-caps, or dried up glue sticks. It is sometimes harder for little hands to coax the glue out of the bottle as the glue gets low, so I just switch them out when that happens (the glue, not the little hands).

Oh, did I mention that if you abide by the method in the caption under the top photo (Glue is applied with dots or thin lines near but not on the edges. Glue goes on thinly and does not need to cover the whole surface) FAR less glue is ever used than any other method I’ve ever used. So, some work upfront, but the pay-off is awesome.

Here’s the video: