Today's Craft Experiments
Mostly resin, but some bits weren't. (Note that I have other pendants I completed this week lying around waiting to be photographed. Soon. I may or may not post them when I do so, depending on interest.)
(later: okay, obviously no interest (sigh))
Ones that I won't know if they worked until tomorrow:
(because they are done in epoxy resin, which needs 24 hours to cure)
- spray coconut oil rubbed inside a complex rose mould, to hopefully make it easier to come out in one piece (idea from this video though they used baby oil).
- Using a modified version of the idea from this video to put bails in resin pendants before they cure; take an eyepin, and bend the end into a 3D spiral so that the end sticks into the uncured resin while the top end is taped flat to the outside top of the mould. My moulds were too small for that, so I put some modelling clay (aka plasticine aka play-doh) next to the mould, and stuck the end of the eye-pin in that.
- done for a square pendant, a rectangular pendant, a rose pendant, and the anchor pendant (see below)
- square and rectangular pendants; layer 1 already done (experimental black mica powder + alcohol + leave to evaporate + then resin). Layer 2: brushed on some Interference Gold mica powder, poured in resin mixed with Interference Green mica powder.
- flat rose pendant (as distinct from the complex rose pendant mentioned above): experimental black mica powder on this one too. Added dark pink mica powder, brushed on and then sort of swirly-mixed. Poured in too much resin and tried to take some of it off and place in the other rose which didn't have enough resin. I'll probably have to trim the edges of this one.
- anchor pendant: this mould is a pain. Trying to get it to be two-colour, but the normal method (pour in one colour to the deeper section, let set, pour in another colour) does not work, because of the curvature of the mould. I have painstakingly coloured in the anchor part with black mica powder, and I'm hoping that the epoxy resin will have left that intact. But whether it works or not, I'm not doing that again. Also experimented a bit with white mica powder on the surface.
- four cabochons (or pendant blanks which will need findings glued on). All of these had pre-sealed circles of paper, which I had done with UV resin earlier. (Partly inspired by this)
- green translucent handmade paper circle: added pale green mica powder and mother-of-pearl chips
- burgundy handmade paper circle: swirls! Four colours of mica powder, but I kept on swirling them so much that they all blended into one colour. That's okay. I swirled it so much because I could see the signs of un-swirling (since I was keeping a beady eye on it). In the end I got so worried about it un-swirling that I put it into the freezer to hopefully increase its viscosity. Mind you, I probably messed up the curing time by doing that. Oh well.
- white textured paper circle: I did put a long bead in this, but I ended up taking it out because I thought it wouldn't work. Added white/pearl mica powder, with a weird effect because I mixed it with alcohol first (following the advice on yet another youtube video, but I can't track this one down).
- metallic copper paper circle with coral branch punched out of the centre: added goldstone chips, and a little bit of mica mix taken from the burgundy one
- WIP: sandy base for a coaster (inspired by this and this)
Things that were preparation:
- Borax crystals having been made yesterday (the washing soda crystals did not work)
- covered one with UV resin (trying out my new Solarez thin-hard UV resin)
- covered others with clear nail polish
- planning out future pendants and coasters
- put aside some of my potential inclusions for the coaster
- after three different attempts, broke one of my bits of scrap wood in half (yes, that was the aim) and then sealed the fresh ends with clear nail polish. It's times like these I wish I had a fully equipped workshop with all the power-tools one could dream of.
- gave up on one pendant and broke it into pieces with a mallet, to be used as inclusions for other projects
Other works:
- rescuing the black paper pendant (aka Turning A Bug Into A Feature)
- this pendant was based on some fancy paper; I domed the front side with Lisa Pavleka Magic-Glos, and it worked perfectly. I domed the back side, and random parts of it didn't cure. After I'd removed the uncured resin, it was like there were sinkholes in the landscape.
- which were rather interesting shapes
- so I brushed the holes with silver mica powder, and tried out my new Solarez thin-hard UV resin over the top of it, since I didn't trust the Lisa Pavleka resin, it would probably have just failed to cure again
- after the Solarez resin cured, I crossed my fingers and domed it with the Lisa Pavleka resin
- (sigh) which failed to cure properly again, even though there was a layer of other resin in between it and the cardboard. This time the centre cured, and the edges didn't. What is it with the Lisa Pavleka Magic-Glos? I've come across other people reporting erratic curing, but I haven't found any reports of what causes it, or any solutions.
- tried out my new Solarez thick-hard UV resin by adding swirly layers on a pendant (completely hiding the lower (ugly) layers of the pendant). Verdict: mostly good.
- thick enough to retain swirls without un-swirling
- a bit stinky (perhaps it isn't epoxy resin, but polyurethane?)
- it does actually soft-cure in 5 seconds under my UV torch! Another plus on the "retaining swirls" side.
- full-cure in five minutes under UV lamp
- while it does cure hard and shiny, it has an odd feel under the fingers, as if it is sticky but not sticky; it's a bit hard to describe. It's just not as glassy-feeling as the Magic-Glos. But maybe I wouldn't notice if I wasn't comparing them side by side.
- I bought two 5g tubes (one of thin-hard and one of thick-hard). That seems to be enough to do one or two pendants per tube. Not much at all, but they were tiny tubes; I was being good in trying out the product before buying a larger amount.
I used up a lot of gloves, toothpicks, paper towels and tissues today. I've also been watching a bunch of youtube videos by this guy, for fun, not because I could make any of his DIYs, due to lacking the aforementioned workshop full of power tools. But this guy and this other guy even more make me wish that I had a lathe.
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