Hi my name is Tai. I'm a resin artist from Oregon and today I'm going to be showing you how to make
pressed flower earrings.
So first thing are your pressed flowers. You need them to be completely dry in order to get the effect you want otherwise they will rot inside of the resin.
So I have them in a little parchment paper. You just want something that's going to kind of keep it dry.
Nothing like paper towel that's going to absorb any moisture that the flower is letting off as it dries.
So like if I were to press these I would just take my flower and I would position the flower
how I'm going to want to use it. So I'm just kind of going to use my finger
to flatten that down and then you'll just slide it into the very bottom of your book.
Give that a nice press and then put some books over it
and it'll be good in about a week.
Once they are completely dry you end up with something like that.
And then you'll want to have these little molds ready to go. They come with little holes in them
so that it's easy for you to add hooks or jump rings to make earrings or necklaces.
I'm going to add our hardener. Today I'm using a two-part epoxy. It's going to be the most durable.
Next we're going to move on to the resin itself and we'll pour that in as well.
Now we mix for about three and a half minutes. You want to mix really slowly
to minimize the bubbles that are going to come out of the mixture.
After I stir a couple times I like to bring in my little heat gun
just to warm it up a little bit. With resin you have about 30 minutes working time with
the heat gun. You can add another 10 minutes to that and it also becomes one a little bit
better if it's warmer. You don't really want to be mixing resin in a cool environment.
There are some bubbles in there from my mixing so I'm just gonna give it a little bit more heat.
And it also kind of changes the consistency so if the resin isn't warm it's going to be really
thick and goopy every stir you get is going to bring a ton of bubbles but when it's a lot warmer
it's a lot more liquid. So then you are ready to move on to your molds. First thing I'm going to do
is add just a little dollop to it. It'll keep any air pockets from being on the bottom of the flower.
You'll put that in. You'll use your little pokey tool to set it right into the mold. You don't
want to use your tweezers because these flowers once dry are very fragile. And then we'll grab
the other one, set it right in your mold, switch over to our pokey tool, position each petal.
And then now for the rest of your resin. You could dump it in there if you wanted to. What I do is I
just do scoop by scoop. Resin is self-leveling so it will do most of the work for you but you
are going to want to kind of push it around to the edges and the corners just to make sure the
flower is completely encased and then after that you can kind of see some bubbles have formed and
that's just from stirring, that's from pouring, what you can do is give it a little bit of the heat gun.
So a little bit of a heat gun and then this is going to cure for at least 24 hours before you
start de-molding it. Once you're ready to take it out of the mold, it's going to look like this.
Then the last step to making your little earrings. You can see I've already added a large jump ring to it.
Depending on how much resin you pour that's going to determine how thick
this is and how big of a jump ring you're going to need. Get your jewelry pliers. You're going to open
one side slightly toward you and then you'll just slip it right in there and do the same thing
and if you hear a little click you'll know you're good. And then the last part are your hooks.
I'm using hypoallergenic 925 sterling silver. They don't bother my ears. They're pretty good quality.
And it's kind of like the jump ring except half and you'll just push that out a little bit and
then you can just slide the earring right in there and just slide it back in the opposite direction.
And that is your finished product.
And that's it you've made your first pair of resin earrings using flowers from your own garden.