Wow... I haven't posted in a while.
It's official. Resin HATES me.
On Monday night I started a necklace project with the stuff and stayed up until nearly 3 am trying to get it smooth and even and not bubbly. I managed to make a mess and get my hands and several spots on my worktable and various bead boxes sticky n the process, but at last it seemed ok. Then on Tuesday morning I discovered that after I left, a big fat bubble had worked its way up to the surface of the resin in one part, despite the fact that the stuff had thickened to the consistency of cold half-congealed honey while I was still trying to work with it the night before. Apparently I should have stayed up even LATER trying to keep bubbles out of it. So I mixed up a teeny bit more resin and tried filling in the bubble with it. Didn't work. I carefully cut out the bubble spot, which was even worse looking after my filling attempt, and tried to patch it. Didn't work. I mixed more resin and tried adding a whole layer to the top, plus filling in the hole. This should have worked, but for some reason it was... grainy. I have no idea why. Cleaned it all off and tried again, and this time it was rippled and bumpy and would not smooth out no matter what. cleaned it off and tried yet AGAIN. Finally it seemed passable. Still a tiny bit rippled, but I didn't even care anymore and I was an hour late for a sort-of appointment to hang out with my niece and help with a project she was doing. Guh.
Then today, I went to work on the necklace and when I picked up the problematic resin piece I left a big ugly thumbprint in the front. The stupid new layer of resin hadn't even hardened properly. It's supossed to be set up after 24 hours, but still slightly tacky and easily marred, and totally hard in 48 hours. It's Friday night. It's had about 80 freaking hours to set up. So I had to scrub the blasted thing down with nail polish remover to get rid of the gummy layer. Now I have a headache and as far as I know the gummy layer is still not totally off... I left it soaking because there were stubborn bits.
At this point I'm thinking I'll have to just start over. Maybe I need new resin. I hate everything, and I'm just going to go get a snack and watch a movie.