Experimenting with resin #1

As much as I love trying out new crafts, I always thought resin jewellery would be too complicated and technical to create, and that I'd need a load of fancy kit before I could make anything. After looking a bit more into it, I learnt that there are different kinds of resin: polyester resin which is generally more toxic and for bigger products, and epoxy resin which is great for small projects and is relatively non-toxic. I watched a couple of Youtube videos and saw that as long as instructions were followed properly, it was really simple to make resin jewellery.

So after a bit of a post pay-day rush I decided to go for it and make my own! It required quite a bit of kit which wasn't particularly cheap (I probably spent between £40-50 initially, but am hoping that once I reach the level where I can sell things, it'll all be worth it.)

I used:

-  Easy Cast Clear Casting Resin (16 fl oz for £19.75) but I was also told on Twitter that Gedeo brand crystal resin is good too (thanks @Dollycool!). I used a bit less than 2oz to make 16 cabochons (the dome shaped resin bits) so you do get quite a bit for your money.

- 16 cabochon mould specifically for resin moulding. I read conflicting advice about using other moulds such as ice cube trays and chocolate moulds onlines, so I decided to play it safe.

- Trylon translucent pigments in magenta and blue. You can pick up the pigment with a stir stick and then stir this directly into the resin before it is poured into the mould.

- Disposable gloves to protect your skin from the resin (and because that stuff is bloody sticky).

- Wooden lolly sticks used to mix the resin together/add pigment. You can buy stir sticks online but I already had lots of wooden lolly sticks knocking around.

- Measuring cups - To ensure the resin sets properly you need to precisely measure the resin and hardener at a 1:1 ratio which you'll then need to mix together in the cups. I accidentally bought small measuring cups instead of large ones but this actually worked well as it allowed me to do several separate mixes of resin, some without pigments, some with pigments and some with glitter.

- Newspaper to cover the work surface.

- Things to cast! I have a lot of glitter and sequins lying around the house, and I also bought some sugar sprinkles and Fimo fruit beads to experiment with. Although I read that casting flowers requires them to be fully dried out first so they retain their colour and shape, I thought I'd try casting a couple of fresh petals.

- Nail file to sand down uneven edges once the cabochons are removed from the mould.

- Hairdryer to add heat to the wet resin in order to remove air bubbles. (This was a tip I found online but I didn't find it particularly effective!)
- A Bostik Handy hot melt glue gun to attach my cabochons to ring backs.

Work station ahoy!

I will say that I initially found the resin really difficult to pour, firstly straight from the bottle into the cups, and then from the cups into the moulds. Not only was it incredibly runny but it took a few seconds for the resin to level out meaning that it was difficult not to overflow each dome! I worked out that if I scooped a bit of resin onto a stir stick I had more control in applying the resin than I did from just pouring from the cup into the moulds.

All poured! It says for moulds an inch thick you should leave 24 hours for a soft set for 72 hours for a hard set. My curiosity got the better of me and I left them for about 50 hours before taking them out of the moulds...

Out they pop! My little resin jellies!

Unfortunately there are quite a lot of air bubbles in a few of them, and a couple have come to the top and made a crater in the surface. I'm hoping this can be sorted by adding a tiny drop of resin in the hole to seal it.

I filled a couple of the moulds too high so some of the cabochons have a thin resin layer around the outside which is what you can see in the above photo. This just needs to be sanded away with a nailfile to crate a smooth edge.

I had a small amount of resin left over so I also tried using the resin as a way to embed some of the Fimo fruits without fully submerging them. Gold glitter was poured into the cup with the resin and then mixed fully to create the sparkly background! I'm not too sure what I'll do with these bottlecaps. It'd be nice to make them into necklaces but first I'd need to find some way to make a hole in them to allow for a chain to be attached.

After having no luck with the Crafter's Pick The Ultimate! Glue (it took ages to dry and didn't give a strong enough hold) I followed the advice of @almighty_faye on Twitter and bought a Bostik Handy mini glue gun for about £11 (and you can get 14 refill sticks for around £4). Once applied, the glue dried almost instantly and created such a strong hold that the ring back showed no sign of falling off. Excellent! So here are the finished rings so far:

This is by far my favourite. It reminds me of a fruit jelly!

As you can see, thanks to the glue gun there's no visible glue around the edges of the ring back but it's still glued on firmly.

This ring was done by adding a thin laser of resin to the mould before shaking in some turquoise glitter, and then adding more resin over the top that had been mixed with a magenta translucent Trylon pigment. It reminds me of the galaxy!

I like the depth of this one and that you can see the sequins throughout! This is achieved by layering up resin and sequins rather than having them all at one position in the mould.

Hooray! As I don't have any workspaces in my uni house I can only make these at my parents house for the time being. I'll get to see the second batch at the weekend and my mum has informed me that a few of them look like either glass eyes or nipples, so I'm excited to see them! Ha! Hopefully once I get the hang of this a bit more I'll be able to start selling them on my Etsy. I've already had good feedback about them and I'm really happy that my first practice with resin went well and that I want to continue with it!

So watch this space for more creations...

Caf

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