Adventures in Resin - Part I

All I can say is, thank goodness for National Poultry Day!


And yes, I can hear you all asking "What the bleep does that have to do with resin?"



Well, I'll tell you. My company, aka the "Crazy Chicken" for those in the know, decided to have a floating holiday this year. And they picked Friday, March 19th for the holiday because it was National Poultry Day.



Which meant I got a day off.



While the kid was in school.



And I didn't tell anyone in my family about the free time because they all usually find ways to fill up any spare moments I might have OR they make me feel guilty about doing something just for fun.



I just stayed home, played hermit, turned off the phone and got my resin Par-TAY on in a big way!



Okay, I did have ONE helper:













"I am NOT poultry, dammit!"

Okay, so, his help was mostly limited to squawking and throwing seeds on the floor. I was kinda hoping for a turquoise feather to stick in a bezel, but nooooooo....

On with the project. I've been collecting "things that might work with resin" for a while now in the hopes of having time to actually doing resin projects:












Uhhh...the collecting may have gotten out of hand. You're shocked, I know. Me? Buy too much stuff? Naaaaahhh....



And yeah, okay, so I did discover that I'd accidentally bought some of the same stuff twice.



Sigh.



I started with an Ice Resin kit from Fusion Beads - includes the two-part resin, measuring cups and stirring sticks. Also in this picture you can see some paper punches, bezels, tiny plastic scoops, a plastic mold (also from Fusion Beads) and some embellishments.














I also pulled out some of my old rubber stamping crap to see if I could incorporate any of it. This is a bag of "holeless beads" that I used to use as embellishment for stamping projects.

Powdered pigment (also a former stamping material) to use for coloring the resin.

I started with some wonderful bird and butterfly vintage prints from Patera and some coordinating bezels. What I liked about these: the prints are pretty enough that you don't have to add much (if anything) to them and they are sized to coordinate with the bezel shapes and sizes. What I didn't like: the bezels are expensive and the store was sold out of most of the sizes and shapes I wanted and they were also sold out of ALL of the coordinating punches so I had to cut everything by hand.











Here's a closeup of some of the images I selected - one has already been glued into its bezel. I learned from a previous attempt at this type of thing (using Diamond Glaze) that I need to glue the images in ahead of time and let them thoroughly dry otherwise bubbles pop up from under the images once I pour the resin in.













Another closeup - I've added a couple of flatback crystals and pearls as embellishments.




I also used some of the bezels I've gotten from Rings 'N Things and filled them with scrapbook paper, colorful brads (that I clipped the metal backs off of) and more crystals:













What I like about the R&T bezels: they are less expensive, they are lightweight, they come with either one loop (pendant style) or two loops (link style) and because the walls on them are thinner, it was easier to trace around them on paper and cut out the tracings and come up with the right size to fit inside. The Patera bezels have thicker walls so that was harder to do on them.











A couple of other techniques I used in some Patera bezels: cut out some scrapbook paper that had a cute circular flower design and some glitter already on it and put in the silver bezel with a pink crystal; cut out some scrapbook paper and glued it in the gold bezel and then used a flower punch to punch out some flower shapes from coordinating paper, glued the flowers down and added a pearl and a crystal.









And here are all my bezels - lined up and ready for resin. But before I pour, there's one more technique I wanted try.


Pouring resin into molds:







In all my "supply collecting", the one thing I forgot to buy was mold release spray. Soooo...I substituted good ol' Pam cooking spray and hoped it wouldn't eff everything up. A little too much came out of the can so I ended up wiping down the molds after I sprayed 'em.


I cut a couple of Patera images to fit in the square molds and then had some bejeweled stickers, brads and more scrapbook paper lined up to go in the other molds.


Then it was time to pour!


Whereupon I promptly totally screwed up the first batch - got the proportions wrong (how is it possible to do this when the measuring cups are MARKED? I dunno, but I managed) and in the process of trying to fix that, I ended up with a TON of bubbles so I gave up and tossed that whole batch.

"Stoopid human! Now bring me a treat!"

But the next batch I was more careful and it came out okay. I poured and poured and filled all my bezels and most of the molds, and I even attempted to cover a couple of wooden butterflies, but I still had some resin left over. So, in true KJ fashion, I ran out to the store, bought more bezels, filled 'em and poured more resin. Still had some left over and I used that to mix in the blue mica pigment and poured that into a mold, too.

And now, here are all my goodies drying under their protective shells.


Stay tuned for the big reveal in Part II to see if any of this worked.


KJ