Extreme crafting - resin jewellery

Usually the holidays give me time to catch up with crafty friends- we like to plan a whole crafting day and often try something new that one or a few of us are keen on. We have tried all sorts of things in the past.

This holidays- led by the art teacher from school, we were all set to try our hand at hand casting some resin jewellery.

In her haste and excitement to join the Fat Quarters for a crafting day, on her way to the car with a box of supplies for us, the art teacher promptly fell down, broke her leg and her ankle and ripped her tendons in the other ankle ! YIKES.


Of course, we didn't know this on the day , we simply proceeded without her , by reading the instructions on the tin and using what we had each gleaned from our favourite source , the Internet.


Don't let this stuff fool you. I know it is the colour of champagne and it has bubbles like champagne - but boy oh boy it stinks. (We wore masks and worked outside-I told you it was extreme).
We used a variety of moulds, some specific to resin casting ( available from spotlight) and some were flexible ice-cube trays or small flexible cake tins.

We popped all sorts of things in after the first layer of resin had been poured....... You have to wait till it is set enough to take the weight of the object and the carefully pop your weeny little object in.

This is a little shell that a friend gave me and a bit of old broken watch machinery.They are resting on the first layer of resin and waiting to be filled up.
Our pieces took longer to set than suggested (like 2 days) but that could be because it has been really cold here lately. Also, we found that the ones that had resin dye in them took longer than the others to set.
The watch machinery in clear resin

Some beads A piece of tape measure.

These are my favourite , I had it in mind to make some handles for a new (very very ugly) set of drawers I have under my sewing table. These were the experiment set. I bought this mould at spotlight as well and the "doings" to turn them into knobs.

Verdict: We had loads of smelly fun doing this. I have a new respect for all those resin artists out there - it is not easy to do this tidily at all. I will do it again because I already have the moulds and am keen to make some drawer knobs for the ugly drawers. I can't see myself ever making jewellery but slightly chunkier things like fridge magnets would be great !

We visited the art teacher in hospital today - she is feeling much better but kind of bedridden until she can walk on the least bad foot. Then it is probably 6 weeks at home "resting". She is worried she will get bored................................really ! ...........hasn't she ever heard of blogging?

We have promised to teach her all about it!