And I made something anyway
Last year I got this strange desire to embed a tiny orgami crane into a sphere of resin. After a few tries I successfully created one, with a mold I made myself (I had bought the wrong kind of molding putty and the mold fell apart afterwards). I attached a bead cap and wire loop and dipped the sphere into resin for a nice clear coat ~ and ruined it. Lumpy, uneven texture... bulges on the bottom from the resin trying to settle... dirt attached to the tacky coat. (Beware, do not dip in resin!)

Well, that put me off resin for a while, even when I bought the right molding putty I was not eager to jump back in. And then it was cold for a long, long time so I could not work outside.



I've been picking up some new molds along the way, and got motivated to create a few things after seeing keri80's recent resin posts on craftgrrl. I folded up a bunch of cranes, got my supplies ready and headed out side. Here you can see the two sizes of cranes I'm using ~ super tiny!!




Problem 1~ Back when I was working with the resin last year, the cap welded itself shut after maybe two uses. Attempts to twist it off with a wrench were starting to buckle the can! How do you avoid this? My husband punctured it with a screwdriver so I could use it (last year) and afterwards I sealed the hole with clay. Unfortunently, I didn't have him around to puncture the can again, and it took me a while to make a new hole.

Problem 2~ After making the hole, I find the resin is half-gelled and barely squeezes out of the bottle. (I'm not sure if this is because it was not air-tight, or because it had been a year. Probably both) I pried the rubber cement/molasses textured resin out of the can and into three small molds. I mixed the catalyst into it (like working with taffy), shoved in the cranes, and it actually worked! There were lots of bubbles in the resin, but I actually like the texture.

Problem 3~ I set the resin into some clay, added some wire and textures, and baked it. I have seen this done before, and was not very worried until I started smelling the resin really strongly as it baked. It was maybe 7 minutes in when I checked on them, and they had turned very yellow and had small cracks on the surface! I was quite heartbroken... especially because my whole can of resin was ruined and I didn't see myself being able to buy more any time soon because it is so pricey. And I was so motivated!


After a while I came back to the pendants and decided they were not that bad. It looks like it could have been intentional, so I went ahead and painted on the silver highlights and added a few layers of clear coat. My husband did not even seem concerned about buying some new resin, so it looks like I may have more soon anyways! I have so many ideas floating around in my head, and I've been needing a new project ;)



So, after all of the disasters, I still present you with these three pendants! The clay on the first two is textured and highlighted with silver paint. The third one is smoothed (not textured)