New hot glue gun

I happened to see this in Lidl a couple of days ago as I was buying groceries. I was so sick and tired of fighting with the cord of my old hot glue gun that I got this. It was 14.99 €, which isn't too bad.

Here is the glue gun out of the package and after a bit of use. What I can already say is that I should have got one of these earlier. I thought hot glue was messy and difficult to use, but it wasn't about the glue, I just had a crappy glue gun. This is just great.

For comparison, below is the old one. I assumed it was good, because of the manufacturer. I mean, I've got a hole puncher manufactured by Kinzo and it's great. However, this one has one basic flaw: it doesn't get hot enough. That's the main reason behind all my problems with hot glue. The cordless one gets to 170°C, and the difference is noticeable. I don't have any papers that may have come with the old one, but I'm sure the temperature is lower, because the glue just stays too thick. I always thought it was supposed to be that way, because this was the first hot glue gun I've ever had. Now I know better.

New headband for the Kindi Kids doll

As I seem to be making an entire outfit for the doll, I thought I might as well make a new headband for her too. I used the original to draw a paper pattern and then cut the piece out of a metal sheet (0.3 mm thick).

Cutting the metal was easy with these shears. I've been wondering about the manufacturer as there are no markings in these. Did a Google search and found a picture of similar shears, but no info on who makes these. However, the picture was from ebay, so I found out that these sell for about 10 €. I don't remember what I paid as it was over 15 years ago.

I bent the metal piece using the original headband as a guide.

Then I covered the upper surface of the metal piece with felt using hot glue.

The next stage was cutting a piece of felt that would cover the inside and gluing it in place.

I glued some ribbon on the upper surface using again hot glue.

The final stage was gluing one of these paper flowers to the headband.

The text in the package sounds really good, but I'm a bit skeptical. I tried finding verification for this, but all searches only found online stores selling this stuff. You'd think that they would make a big deal out of the story, if it's legit, so I still have my doubts.

Here is a picture of the finished headband on the doll. Metal should keep its shape fairly well, and gluing the felt onto it when it has been bent should also add some tension that'll help to keep the shape.