Last of the resin for a while, I promise.

Bezel cups. The first one was colored with a bit of fluorescein, a dye that glows under blue light. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet.

Weird little mold that was originally filled with Hello Kitty stickers. Blythe-scale lime jello.

Another little guy and some tiny erasers I’ve had since I was a kid.

Center of my paint palette filled with buttons! Not sure what to do with it.

.

More resin bits, these ones made using stuff I found at hardware stores. For more hardware inspiration, check out Hardwear by Hannah Rogge. I got it with my brand new Seattle library card last week. It’s got some clever projects and neat connection techniques.

Most of these follow the template of 1 find some sort of ring 2 tape the back of the ring 3 fill with colored resin. I’ve now tried lab paper tape and packing tape, and I didn’t like either; they leave too much sticky residue on the resin. Also, some of them leaked. More experiments needed. Most of these are probably destined to be necklaces.

hose clamps

Washers. The cork one is my favorite.

rubber band. I’m going to play around with this idea more, I think.

.

Another goodbye present,this one for my teaching partner of 5 years. He totally randomly came across craftlog by accident by googling googly eyes the other day. I glued magnets to the back using E6000, which I think is not actually the right glue for the job (epoxy instead?) It is awesome and creepy.

.

I wasn’t kidding when I said I had half a container of resin to use up before moving. I’m going to drag out posting everything or else it’ll be a huuuge entry. Oh, and I am now living in Seattle, so any local peeps who might like to be craft friends, drop me an email. I have to say I’m liking the scene here so far; in 2 days, I’ve randomly stumbled on a big street/craft fair, a weaving supply store with a ton of roving and other goodies, and a quilting store with a reasonably good selection. Also, several indie designer shops.

I am upset to move away from my craft night buddies, though. I made resin jewelry as goodbye presents for everybody.

All scientists love graph paper. In fact, over dinner at the last craft night, we had an entire conversation comparing brands of engineer pads and lamenting the discontinuation of our favorite brand of rectangle-gridded paper (immortalized in resin on the bottom left). Very sad. The nonscientists in the bunch thought we were crazy. :P These were molded in a paint palette and then I dremel-drilled a hole in each one and added a jump ring to make necklaces. The ones with numbers are funny because some of them turned translucent in the resin so the numbers from the back show through and make little weird looking patterns (top row middle, for example).

These are more 96-well plate molded plugs. Amy had some great deep-well plates that I used for the larger ones. Tinted with pastels and also dremelled for necklaces. They look really cute on.

One of the plugs sanded down and glued into a bezel cup, then to a ring blank.

Other lab-related ones I didn’t give away:

Molded with part of the lid of a 96-well plate. You can even seen the little numbers embossed on the lids. I had a few other experiments with the lid, but they failed spectacularly. I like the effect enough that I’ll probably try it again, though. Looks like a lego, but it a little curved because of how I had it squished into the little mold.

Molded inside lab tubing. I am really eager to see how these look as bracelets and necklaces.

.

Here’s how I finished some of the resin pieces I’ve posted lately.

Glued to ring blanks

1 layer clear, 1 layer yellow pastel, dremel drilled (I need to practice, obviously) with 4x fishing line

screw eye plus contact case molded and pastel colored

.

I’m moving to Seattle in a month, so one of the many things on the todo list is to use up all my unshippable resin. What a good idea for a craft night. :) Besides these ones, we also embedded buttons and coins, and I played around with layering colors with only slightly better results than last time. I’m mainly having trouble getting a flat first layer. Anyway, these are my favorites from the night:

My friend Matt embedded some bits from a circuit board. I like the LEDs best.

Another great model railroad figure one made by my friend Dannie. I love the composition.

Creepy little Mizna Wada girls from some stationery.

I really like these, colored with pastels and molded with a 96-well plate (finally found one flexible enough!) I have plans for necklaces and rings with these, if I can ever find any ring blanks I like.

These are some silver findings from a bead store. They have little holes on each side, which are too small for the resin to leak from; I didn’t think to put a headpin through the hole until I’d already poured in the resin. :P

.

Mostly for my own future reference: Normal poly 96-well plates don’t release resin. Not even 12-well plates are flexible enough. Also, mix the pastel dust into the resin before you pipette it into a small mold, because otherwise it’s really hard to resuspend.

.

My sister got me casting resin for Christmas, and boy did we have a fun time with it. Look at all this stuff we made. I’ve been wanting to try resin for a while (ye olde craftlog archives say since 2004!), and it is as fun and cool as I’d hoped. Comment with any favorite/inspirational resin links because I’m definitely hooked.

We tried all sorts of stuff for molds, and shockingly everything worked except for a tiny petri dish (I have a feeling a larger petri dish might still work because it’s more flexible), a very rigid contact lens case, and a thin plastic candy mold (which sort of worked except that I had to destroy the mold to get the thing out, see below). No mold release for anything, though 15 minutes in the freezer helped considerably for some of them.

My favorite one, a piece of Japanese fabric in a ~1.5×2 inch mold. Kind of Amy Ruppel-ish, no?

My favorite one that Ariel made, a zombie in a ~.5x.75 inch dollar store pill box mold with fabric background and a vintage model railroad figurine.

The pill boxes were really good molds. This one has a piece of washi paper embedded.

And these ones are buttons. Ariel is going to make a bracelet from them.

Another good mold idea I got from Crafters Coast to Coast is a plastic paint palette. The embeds are a carefully cut out fabric flower and a 1 inch punch from my 2007 Snow and Graham calendar. I am in love with the fabric flower.

plastic flowers

A candy mold with a plastic flower embed. The resin kind of melted or reacted or who knows what with the mold and I had to cut it off. Because of this, the surface is not as smooth as the others, but I think it’ll look great after some sanding.

My mom also got me a box of chalk pastels to use for coloring. They seemed to work, though I have to pay better attention to adding only really fine dust. There are a few clumps or bigger pieces in them. The cubes have one layer clear, one layer colored, but it’s hard to see. I think if I pour them deeper next time they’ll look super cool, kind of like plastic versions of P1 Unless Otherwise Noted’s awesome glass jewelry. The upper left one was molded in a contact lens case and you can see the starburst pattern in it. It looks like a piece of candy.

Now to drill holes in them all. :)

.