New Jewelry and New Molds just added!
I haven’t quite had time for much other than molds and playing catchup. Now that I am out of classes for four months, I am trying to catch up with 
months worth of etsy listings. I don’t know about y’all but I don’t feel like I can really make new resin pieces until I finish with the ones I have already made. I have a good sized bin full of really nice pieces just waiting for me. The making of the components is always the fun part – putting them together and listing them not as fun but slowly I am trying to list a couple along with my new set of molds I released late last night.
If anyone has any suggestions of what you might like to see, I would welcome the suggestions.
New items added to Etsy!
It has been a long time coming but I finally have some new items on my etsy. I will be slowly adding items to the store. I started with some Hello Kitty pieces. Watch out soon for some molds of my own to be added but for new jewelry.
Take a peak – http://jeweledlizard.etsy.com or click the link in the sidebar.
12 Hour Finishing Session.
No photographs just yet but I spent a huge amount of time over the weekend trying to weed through my bucket of nearly complete pieces and get them ready to be strung. I love some of the newer molds but unless you do something with the surface of things like Hello Kitty, you can’t make out her face at all. So I was busy painting and adding color to some pieces. I also collaged some of my steampunk basic shapes resin pieces. I really love the way they turned out. I also completed another tree pendant. It started out life as a slightly grey transparent piece and turned into a beautiful happy tree scene complete with swing and the saying Live-Love-Laugh. Anyway, I did do a video. Not the greatest lighting in this video but you can still see some of the pieces. Next step, wire wrap and pictures.
Quickly glossing of those sanded resin edges!
I first want to start off by saying that the only way to truly have a long lasting finished surface for your resin piece is to use nothing but hand polishing your piece or re-glossing it with resin. While using items like Triple Thick or Glossy Accents will last for quite some time, because they are a softer material they wear off or get dinged. Using the earlier methods, like those tables at Sonny’s BBQ, your resin pieces will look nearly the same. Just look at the pieces from the 60′s and 70′s. However, some of the pieces you will be making aren’t high end pieces and some aren’t made for wear and tear situations. No one expects a $10 glittery sticker style piece to last for 5+ years and pieces made for stuff like scrapbooking just won’t get that much wear and tear.
This is not the “best” fix but a quick fix for those wanting to finish out those sanded edges on an otherwise perfect resin piece. Adding a little Diamond Glaze or Glossy Accents to your finger and just rubbing it over the sanded edge will gloss up the piece and hide those edges. The glosses dry very quickly especially in thin coatings so be sure that you keep your finger just slightly damp and clean any strayed glaze immediately.
This technique is also helpful for rescuing a piece that has stray Dremel marks. Its not always easy to control the Dremel tool and it slips off the end and gashes your piece. The same technique as above is used for this. It is better to spot fix a shiny resin piece than to entirely coat your piece in a gloss. If your un-coated resin is already nice a glossy, it should stay that way for a long time. Anyway, like always, a video is worth 1,000 words.
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Cold enameling charms with resin and pigments.
There are so many beautiful, highly detailed brass, bronze, and silver charms being sold nowadays. Most are quite large and don’t need anything additional to stand on their own other than a matching chain. Sometimes more is not better. You can though enhance the look without taking anything away from the piece. The majority of charms being sold are not solid bronze or brass and true glass enameling is not possible because they cannot withstand the high temperatures required to melt the powdered glass. Cold enameling is your next best choice and is quite durable, cheaper than glass enameling, and your choice of colors is limitless.
I recently did a video showing this process, while not using these two exact same charms, the procedure is the same. You will need:
- Resin – Long working time is a must. Envirotex, Famowood, Easy Cast, etc.
- Powdered Pigments – Pearl-X mica powders or even powdered eye shadow. I would recommend against liquid colorants as it is best not to change the chemical properties of the resin for this process.
- Mixing sticks and some sort of applicator – I use a plastic palette spatula and a paintbrush.
- Palette for mixing – plastic is better.
- Charms
Even though resin is liquid, it is not water. It is a much thicker substance and the surface tension is your friend especially for a project such as this. There is an art to applying resin to a surface with no boundaries. You want to apply enough to cover the surface and dome it a little bit but too much and you will break the surface tension that is created keeping your resin in place. It takes practice.
Below is a video I did cold enameling some pendant pieces and hope that it will give you some ideas you can take and run with.
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