Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Resin jewelry and some updates!


  It’s been a crazy couple of months and I haven’t had the time to post (not to mention losing my email address AND password to the blog). On Feburary 24th some of my mixed media art was showcased in the new 11 East Gallery, in Glassboro. It was a night filled with some amazing art, live music and some cool people. As of now, I’m working on some new projects for the up and coming artwalk in Smithville in April. I’ve been working on a plethora of new jewelry, and that is the subject of tonight’s post, resin jewelry to be exact.
I have been dabbling in resin for about a year now, and it’s become such a fun, addicting craft for me. When I first laid eyes on resin jewelry, I wondered how it was done. I imagined it being a long, difficult process, and also very pricey. I couldn’t have been more wrong. While it’s not exactly “cheap”, you definitely get your money’s worth. One set of resin makes roughly 30 pendants. Pretty damn amazing. So with a little research on the subject, I bought some resin, molds and mold release and got started. I had no clue what I was doing at first and my first bottle of resin was wasted while I got a feel for this new art, with some practice, I’ve produced quite a few pendants that I can say I’m pretty proud of. Just be sure to pour your resin in a WELL VENTILATED area. Fumes are not cool. I do mine outside (if you do it outside make sure it’s not windy, that spells disaster) and I let the resin harden in one of our sheds. The anticipation of the resin drying is the worst part. I let mine sit a full 24 hours before busting them out of the molds, they should harden completely at about 36 hours.
What you can do with resin jewelry is only limited to your imagination. You can literally capture almost anything inside, as long as it fits into the mold you are using. Here’s a few pictures of some of the jewelry I’ve created so far, much more to come of course!