Girl's Weekend Part III : Resin class

"explore " This one seems appropriate, as we were exploring a new medium!
"why Mona dreams" I've always thought Mona Lisa looks like she's day dreaming.

I researched different types of resin, and settled on Ice Resin for several reasons. It has a good rating among other artists, it's easy to use ( no UV equipment needed like some of them), lots of info on the web about using it, and since you can buy it in fairly small amounts, it seemed the prefect way to get one's toes wet. I bought a round of bezels for each of us off Etsy, and away we went!

Resin is both easier and harder than I thought. It's easier to mix up and pour, but I can see it will take a few tries to get it just so. I think my pieces have too many air bubbles. The directions suggest letting it set for 5 minutes.. I am thinking maybe letting it set for 10 minutes next time. I can defiantly tell which ones were poured first vs. later. The later ones are much less bubbly. Also the room was colder, and the directions suggest that can cause more bubbles.

It's hard to judge how much to pour into the cup. The cups/findings we used varied by depth.. I actually over poured a few pieces, and they were the deeper ones.
It's very important to keep the pieces level while they dry. We stacked them on shelves in the closet out of the way, and one of the shelves wasn't very level, didn't realize it til later. Those pieces have a definite slant.

My favorite piece I made is my starry night bracelet. Each component is a section of the painting starry night by Vincent van Gogh and the middle one is the whole painting in miniature. I've always loved this painting ( who doesn't??) It was so much fun playing around with this famous painting.

My conclusions about resin? It can be fun, but waiting 72 hours before it's completely dry sucks. I might have to look at the UV versions ( UV light resin can be cured very quickly!) Also, I bagged one of the pendants a week later and noticed it stuck to the bag. so now I have non shinny marks on the surface.. not good. I don't know if this means I didn't mix it quite right or if it got wet in the bag or something or what. Something to research sometime.

I will probably do more resin in the future.. if nothing else I still have 3/4Th's of the ice resin, and that's with pouring 21 cabs and 3 bracelets between the 3 of us!