A break from the knitting this week for two reasons. Firstly, I am hideously behind with my jewellery projects. Secondly, I've been experiencing aching on the left side of my neck, going down my shoulder and arms, which my doctor tells me, shock, horror is the result of too much knitting! I need to take it easy until the symptoms go away and then improve my knitting posture.
So, banned from knitting, I decided to tackle Helen Cant's All That Glitters resin project from August's Make Jewellery Magazine.
I get my water cast resin from East Coast Fibreglass Supplies and its shelf life can be as little as three months. It's been a bit longer than that since I did any resin casting, so I had a quick, probably very unscientific, check and it seemed okay so I proceeded.
Helen's project involved encasing butterfly and flower sequins from Mei Flower in clear resin and then creating a glittery resin back. Quite a few pieces were illustrated in the magazine but I settled on the butterfly necklace, a ring and some earrings.
The butterfly mould I bought specially from Hobbycraft and I already had an assorted jewels mould from Metal Clay for the rest.
I have found that the trick with encasing things in resin is planning, so I played around with the sequins in the mould to work out a rough arrangement and how many I needed.
I wore my fetching full face mask to mix the clear resin and the accelerator to pour into the moulds. I then used a cocktail stick to add in the sequins and poke them into place. I then left the clear layer to set.
The next day, I mixed some more resin then added some purple transparent pigment and some purple glitter. I then poured the glittery layer onto the back of the clear resin and left it to set for a further 24 hours.
The resin set perfectly and I was pleased with the purple glitter effect. I had previously tried to used glitter with solid rather than transparent pigment and the effect had been rather mottled.
Now came my least favourite part, for which I roped in hubby. The sanding. We sanded the back of each piece wet with sandpaper starting at a 400 grade and work to a finer 1200 grade. Hubby also applied three grades of plastic polish to the clear side of the shapes (he has much more patience than me).
To get the shapes ready to make into jewellery, hubby kindly drilled holes in the top of the wings of the butterfly (a bit mean really) and then attached pegs to the earring shapes.
To finish the butterfly necklace, I attached a piece of the silver plated chain to each wing using large jump rings and added a jump ring and lobster clasp at the back to close. The ring cabochon was scored on the back and then glued to a ring base using Araldite two part glue. For the earrings, I added plastic star beads to make a longer drop earring and attached them to sterling silver hooks.
I think the pieces are very effective and haven't given me any sort of strain injury. I doubt I'll be able to keep way from my knitting needles for long though...
Melx
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