Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supplies needs!
Hi. This is Julie from Beadahalique.com. Today we're going to be using
two part resin to make lovely pendants and bracelets.
There's a couple different options you have when you are
choosing your resin. There is Easy Cast which is a clear casting epoxy. It has two
parts.
It has the resin and the hardener.
There is also Ice Resin. It has two parts as well, the hardener and the resin.
Now before you begin making your resin
what you want to do is prepare your workspace.
Part of that is laying down some paper
so that you did protect your work surface and you wanna make sure that you're working on a completely
leveled surface.
You also want to make sure that it is actually warm in your house. You don't want to have
it be too cold. That's going to effect how the resin actually sets up.
So you want it to be between seventy and eighty five degrees. If you have to turn your heater
on a little bit before you begin, that's always a good idea. We're trying to keep a really
stable environment.
Also wanna make sure that your resin is heated up as well. You don't want to be hot but you definitely
want it to be cool. What I've done is, I've gone ahead and just taken a bowl from my
kitchen sink. I put some warm water in it. It's not hot, you don't ever want it to be boiling but
you do want it to be warm. I've just submerged both parts of my resin into the water for about ten minutes.
I've also assembled my mixing cups.
Here at Beadaholique.com we sell a wonderful kit of mixing cups
with the ounces marked on them because you are going to be measuring
out
your resin and your hardener in equal parts, one to one.
And our kits also come with a paint brush and some stir sticks.
You'll need both of these when you're making resin projects.
The Ice Resin kit that we sell here at Beadaholique.com actually comes with little measuring cups
as well.
They have smaller measurements which is really nice as well.
It goes down to an eight of the fluid ounce
which is nice for smaller projects. Comes with some nozzles and some stir sticks as well.
I've already prepared all of my resin pieces that I wanted to do today. I'd like to do several at once just
because it does take awhile for the resin to setup
and I'd rather have a couple projects going at once.
So what I've done as you can see I set down some little ball chains, some flat back Swarovski
Crystals, these are actually image transfers and this is actually a collage sheet, I've put in some
gears here.
So all of these are prepped and ready to go. They're seal, they're glued, they're solid and they
are dry. It's really important
that all of your glue and sealants are completely a hundred percent dry before you begin. If
they're not sometimes you get a little bit like a milky white residue, which is something
you wanna avoid.
You're going to want to make sure that they're dust free. So if you've done several projects days before, weeks
before, you've set them aside waiting for when you're going to do your resin,
you want to go ahead and get any dust or debris off of them. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take
my resin
and my hardener out of my warm water and I'm going to dry them off.
Just using a cloth.
Then I'm going to take my measuring cup.
You don't have to make the full bottles each time. They are gonna be able to
store on the shelf just fine.
So I take
one part Hardener. You're going to want to have a one to one ratio.
So I'm just going to slowly pour that in until it goes up to the one ounce mark.
There we go.
It's okay if it drips. You've already covered your surface and you're gonna be able to just clean that up.
Now I'm going to use my resin.
I've noticed as this is settling that it went just slightly over the one ounce
so when I go ahead and put the
resin in here and I'm going to allow it to just go slightly over the two ounce.
And there that looks about right.
Now I'm going to take my stir stick
and I'm going to start stirring
and I'm going to do this for two full minutes.
So what I'm going to do is scrape my sides around,
stir some more.
Scrape my stir stick. Keep stirring.
You're gonna to get a lot of bubbles. That's totally okay. We're gonna work on those later.
Just stir continuously for two full minutes. Set your microwave clock, set your egg timer.
We've been stirring for two minutes.
You go ahead, scrape you stir stick.
Stir it a little bit more. And then you're going to take another clean cup.
You're gonna go ahead and pour it in there.
I'm going to put this dirty stick into here. I'm going to start with a new stick. I'm going to stir for
another full minute.
And one thing, when you're working with the resin
you wanna make sure you have a set amount of time that you can just devote to. You're not going
to pause in the middle. Once you start
you're going to complete it until you actually have it poured into your bezel or settings or molds or
whatever you are working on.
Now you're ready to start pouring. You're going to do it right after your stirring.
I'm going to start with my bottle cap.
I'm going to go real slow.
With my bottle cap I've punched little holes into the
exterior so that I could put on some jump rings. I want to see if I can do this very carefully
where I don't go up to those holes because I want that jump ring to still have some
flexibility and have some movement. I'm happy with that.
I'm going to go on to my next piece.
Don't worry about the bubbles right now, I'm going to go back and take care of those in
a little bit.
Don't wanna over fill your bezel because what will happen is it'll spill out of the sides.
That's another reason that you're going to go ahead and
put down protective paper. I think that looks just about right.
Now I'm going to let those sit
for a few minutes.
And then we're going to take care of those bubbles.
Once five minutes has passed you're going to take your Micro Flame Torch
and turn it on. Get
a nice continuous flame going
and quickly swipe it over the top if your pieces. That's going to take care of those bubbles.
Pull you torch away.
Turn it off.
And now what I'd like to do is I'd like to go back in about another five minutes, see if anymore
bubbles have arisen. If they have I'd just go back and I repeat the same process of the
torch
quickly swiping and over the top.
You don't want to ever let the flame
rest on the pieces themselves you want to quickly swipe it over their top. Just enough
to allow the heat to get those bubbles to dissipate.
Now at this point I'm going to
let these sit for twenty four hours and what I want to do is I want to go
ahead and cover my pieces
using just a big box or a bowl or something that's gonna keep them sheltered from the
dust getting into them.
Because any dust that does fall on them will set into the resin during that first twenty
four hour period.
So I'm just gonna to cover them lightly. I don't want it to be an airtight cover. I just usually just take
a nice cardboard box,
put that over the top,
and then put a little wedge in the side of the box just something even like my
Easy Cast box. I'll put it down here,
lay the box over the top
and allow them to dry for twenty four hours.
I'll go back
and then
they'll be able to be moved around after twenty four hours but they're not going to be to
their hard cured state for seventy two hours.
So there's a little bit of a length time there and that's why I choose to do several projects
at once
instead of doing them each
separately.
And that is Resin Casting.
Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supplies needs!