Glitter and Chocolate and Fairies, Oh MY!

Told you I got to play with the resin this weekend! I had one perfect pour - didn't lose a thing! Then, a second pour and I lost a couple items to grease spots...this despite I don't even KNOW how many coats of sealer on the paper! So frustrating! And WHY does it always pick the pieces I'm the most excited about. GRRR! Still, everything else survived so I'm pretty happy overall.






"Mermaid" glitter - my favorite color. It's a dark blue base, with shots of aqua, pink and silver in it and I just love it.

These molded glitter pieces are a great way to use up extra resin. See, when I mix up a batch, I'm never sure how much I'm going to need to do all the wood beads and pendants. So, I just mix up a full batch each time. If I use it all - great. If not, I stir a couple of scoops of glitter into whatever resin is left over and then pour it into molds.

When it hardens, I pop all the pieces out of the molds and sand all the edges so they are nice and neat.

I make some quick wire bails and glue them on to the backs of the pieces. I'm even getting fancy enough that I can make a bail for each end and create these link components. Then, the next time I resin, I throw glitter into whatever resin is remaining from THAT batch and pour it on the backs of these pieces. This hides the bail wires/glue and gives each piece a nice, smooth, perfect back. Occasionally an edge will need a little additional sanding here or there, but that's about it.

Roses and chocolates, anyone? To make this set, I poured clear resin and when it was partially set, I placed the brass rose charm into it and let it harden for several days. Then, I poured another layer of clear resin and dropped gold beedz/glitter and chocolate sprinkles into it. The sprinkles leave a back that's too rough to put a bail on yet so I had to do another layer with "Inca" glitter (gold, copper, brass colors). Once that was all dry, I popped everything out, added gold wire bails and poured another layer of the resin/glitter mixture.

Had enough to make a focal and matching charms or earring pieces.

Keirsten from lunedreams was nice enough to give me a link to a great Etsy artist who's doing some fun, retro-70's, California-style images. I went right out and bought some and these are the first pieces that I've finished using the artwork!

It TOTALLY reminds me of my childhood in So Cal.

I can so totally see these images on t-shirts from Miller's Outpost and I would have to buy Dolphin shorts, Dittos or a pair of Chemin de Fer jeans to go with them.

Thanks so much, Keirsten! You rock! Oh, and you have to send me your address so I can send you some thank you goodies!!

And speaking of childhood memories...how about some Hello Kitty? And this was just the initial test piece! If you are a Hello Kitty fan (and I know at least ONE of you is still collecting HK stuff but don't worry...I won't out you on my blog LOL) just WAIT until you see the pieces that are coming!!

And then it suddenly hit me. What would look better using these techniques than some great fantasy images? Here I am the total sci fi/fantasy uber-geek and I'm not bringing ANY of that awesomeness to my beads? For shame!

So here are the first of my fantasy images - some pretty fairies. Coming soon: mermaids and unicorns!

With glitter added...because how can you do magic without fairy dust?

Plus, y'know, I LOVE the sparkle! The glitter doesn't work so well in photos - you should see this one in real life! It's trying REALLY HARD to migrate out of the "sell" pile and into the "keep" pile.

Then, my wood vendor started offering up these cool "stick" pendants and I thought they were a natural fit with some of the gorgeous Washi paper that I have in my old rubberstamping stash. I keep seeing this as a pendant with a charm laid on top of it and/or strings of chain hanging down around it.

Several people have been asking about real pressed flowers. Here's my first attempt using one of the real violas that I posted in Friday's BP. I was a little concerned that the resin might damage the color or that the flower wouldn't be colorfast, but it worked like a charm. I'm not 100% happy with the background paper, but it was the best thing I had to add a little detail without detracting from the flower. I'm going to have to look for some better background stuff because I will definitely be making more of these!

I will begin listing a few of these new things each night at Be Resinable. This is just a sampling - there's a lot more that I just haven't had time to take pictures of yet :-) I'm also getting to the point where I think I can start taking special orders so if there's something you'd like to see me do or a particular "theme" you want me to pursue, let me know!

KJ