Saturday 18 February 2012

Resin Things. 'Resings'

I'm slowly getting to grips with the potential of resin.

S l o o o o w l y.

This initial part of the process is exciting and frustrating in equal measures, as everything seems to take forever as I bumble around trying to work out what to do and how to do it.

I'm also not enjoying the finishing process of filing and endless rounds of wet-sanding for the cast pieces, but the finished results do look lovely and shiny. 

Fimo shapes used as the basis for a silicone mould

I'm experimenting with inserting vintage diamante and lace into the hearts, mixing transparent and pearlescent resins together, half mixing colour into clear resin and trying to create amber effects.  The idea of making hearts was inspired by a necklace I made from papier mâché, which didn't work as well as I wanted.



Super-pretty shells using transparent and pearlescent resins with inset resin 'blobs'

Free-form 'Zebra' bangle from a cast of a very thin bone bangle.
I can't see what I'm doing until it's finished and turned out of the mould, so every one is different
No chance of making it as a hand model
I'm also experimenting with embedding things in different layers of resin to make pictures, which I'm loving as I'm a massive fan of collage.  The animal ones below feature foil sweet wrappers, handmade papers, beads, sequins and, bizarrely, Barry M glitter dust. I've also tried 'painting' with the resin to make the fronds of weed, the patterns on the moon and the fox's chest fur.

British Wildlife pendants - otter with fish, hare and fox
The rather rubbish resin pendant from the course transformed into a fab foxy one
MEANWHILE I'm still beavering away and with the arrival of my exciting Dremel power tool, I hope to be able to actually make some of these things into finished pieces of jewellery.

Oh well, back to the sanding . . .

Come on, you know there had to be one.
But hang on . . . .


. . .  spot the difference