I doubt whether there are many people who have not used blue tack before as it has been around for ages now and you can buy it in most stores but just in case you are someone who has not used it before it is a substance which feels a bit like chewing gum that has been well chewed and you can break bits off of it and use it to stick things to just about anything.


Bluetack is best used for sticking up things (usuallu paper or card) that are in a temporary spot or may be things that you would keep changing. Things like hanging up Christmas cards at Christmas time is a good use for it. It does not usually mark the walls although I have heard that some people have found it marked their walls, we have not ever had any markings. The people who I know who have said it marked their walls had plain painted walls where as we have wallpaper so it might be different to painted walls.



The best way to get something to stick something up is to pull of a small piece of the bluetack and roll it into a ball. When you first get the bluetack it is in a rectangular pack and it comes as a whole piece so you need to use just a small bit. It can be quite tough to pull off at first and you do need to work it a bit in your fingers or hand so that it softens up. Once you get a decent ball of the stuff you can press it onto the back of one corner of whatever you are sticking up. You will need to do this for each corner if it is something like a leaflet, then you press it onto the wall with a squashing kind of movement. The smaller the item the less blue tack you will need, and if its something like a Christmas card you will probably get away with just putting one blob in tow diagonally opposite corners as the card will stay stiff and not curl up.


If you are sticking up a larger item like a poster then you would need bigger blobs (about the size of a ten pence once flattened) and you would probably be better off putting some extra blobs down each side instead of just one in each corner as the weight of the poster might make it flop and sag a bit and then it could fall down and get torn.


One up on the wall, you will find the items will stay up quite well. The only things we ever get falling down are some of the heavier Christmas cards. We think this also has to do with the heating in the room as it might make the bluetack lose its hold quicker.


When you want to take the item down again you pull it carefully from the wall. If it leaves a bit of residue on the wall then get a ball of the bluetack and roll it over the residue and it should all come off onto the ball and leave nothing on the wall.


There are some other good uses you can use the blue tack for as well as sticking things up on the wall. We use ours in one of our kitchen cupboards to stick things like prescription reminders etc on the back of the door so we know where they are but they are out of the way. Another use is that if you have a picture frame hanging on the wall that doesn't hang straight then you can put a ball of blue tack behind one corner and press it onto the wall and it will keep the picture from going wonky. We also use it on one of our cupboards, we have one that the door doesn't stay shut, every time you shut it it opens again, so we put a ball of bluetack behind the door and it shuts fine and is easy to open again. You can also use it to keep things from moving about, like we have some photo frames that stand on one of out cupboards but it is highly polished and I am worried they will slip off and break if the dog knocks them so we put a tiny blob underneath where you can't see it and it stops them slipping off.


There must be many other uses you could find to use the blue tack. It is very reasonable to buy, you can buy a pack for £1 in Tesco, but at Christmas you can usually get them buy one get one free in a lot of the stores so we stock up on a couple of packs.

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