Heat Guns vs. Craft Irons

So I went to Wal-Mart tonight because I wanted to see about getting a heat/embossing gun, but all they had were hot glue guns. (How the woman in the craft department thought that heat guns and hot glue guns were the same, I have no clue.) So I bought an inexpensive iron instead. It's a regular household one, but I intend on using it just for my scrapbooking.

I've seen a lot of Tim Holtz' demo videos where he spritzed water on paper, inked it and used a heat gun to get the paper to flatten out/dry the ink because the paper had curled up under the water. Can I do the same effect with an iron?

Note: I don't intend on putting the iron on an inky piece of paper and then turn around and iron a white shirt. LOL The iron is strictly for crafting!

Thanks in advance!!!

~Sarah

Heat gun & hot glue gun are certainly VERY different from each other! Hot glue gun is just that...glue that's hot. A heat gun is just heat without the air (like a blow dryer) to dry ink, etc., quicker and for embossing. Others here may have other fantastic uses for it too. As for the iron, I'm only interested in using it in the same manner Tim Holtz did. It would certainly help flatten paper that curls when wet (using any sprays - Glimmer Mist, etc.). Again, others here will have other uses for it too.

I tea/coffee stain a lot of tags and paper. I use my regular iron and a pressing cloth to flatten them back out after they curl. So I'd say an iron would work on any paper that's curled from being wet. JMO

You can use a regular iron. I just put copy paper over my paper I want to flatten. I think it works way better than a heat gun. There are also neat techniques you can do with an iron. One I just tried and it worked fantastic is called Wax paper resist. Using and embossing folder, emboss a piece of wax paper. Sandwich the wax paper between two pieces of cardstock and iron (the original tutorials said to use glossy cardstock, but I didn't like the way it turned out with glossy so I tried again with regular and liked it better). Using distress inks, sponge over your cardstock - the ink will be repelled where the wax is melted onto your cardstock and soak in where its not creating the pattern of the embossing folder. I sprayed mine after with some glimmer mist. I can't post the card I made yet, since its for a swap on another site, but it came out really pretty.