One step foward...

I'm currently working on making the video tutorial for the resin shuttles. Editing takes up so much time. There's takes and retakes and even more retakes. Did I mention I'm doing this in the spare moments from the Real World Work Life? For something that started as just fun, it is taking a lot of work. The biggest issue I'm having is temperature control. Starting the shuttles is not an issue. The curing time is. My Honey keeps turning the air conditioner down to a temperature that ruins the pieces. No matter how many times I mention it, he keeps forgetting. I've wasted bottles of resin this way. For every one shuttle that pans out, there's six that didn't.

On the failures, I'm thinking of trying to make them into thread bobbins. Or even make them into a tray collage encased in a even larger resin base. Similar to the dragon plate display.

Or if I can find a "tile" mold, I can make several of them and use them like blocks to make other things, like a box or shelf. Some of the shuttles came out pretty but are not stiff enough on their own to hold tension. With a side project like this, I won't have to feel bad about throwing those away.

I found another YouTube tutorial on an alternative way to make molds. Make a small vaccum former than with LDPE plastics, make the molds.
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I just picked up my new shop vac as well as most of the materials needed. The only thing missing is the actual plastic. I found a local distributor but they only sell large sheets for more than I planned on spending. I'm looking into alternatives online right now. I did try out making silicon molds out of silicon and cornstarch, but I found that their lifespan is really short. It was not worth the mess involved making them. Plus they did not work for resin casting, they kept leaving a nasty pasty film that I had to sand layers off to remove. So for now I think I'll stick to my good old standard: Oyumaru.

Experiment and expanded experience

I was asked by a friend at work if I could "fix" some toys his son broke. The first was a gun, it turned out to be too difficult to do a quick fix, so I made a mold... 

This is one side of it. There is a lot of flash I'm going to have to file off, but it's okay I have time.

Surfing YouTube again, I found a few tutorials on how to make your own silicon mold with three simple ingredients. I thought to give it a try. After making a trip to Wal-Mart, I picked up the stuff for about $8. Some clear 100% Silicon, Corn Starch, and Vegetable oil (you can use any type of oil, baby/corn/vegetable), and I was ready to experiment! There are some other tutorials where the authors don't take so long to get to the actual teaching portion, but this one is the one that got me started so I linked it.

 

I have to say it was pretty easy to do. The downside: it's really stinky during the shaping process! I strung up some beads with some jewelry wire and did my test.

 

IF you plan on using this technique to make your molds, know in advance it is very sticky messy when you begin working with it. Use gloves. And have a fan to blow the fumes/vapors away from you from the silicon. I ended up making about four molds like this, on two I added a bit of color.

Clear beads with gold flakes

They end result came out nicely. They are not as shiny as the pieces I cast into Oyumaru or even the Silicon Putty, but you can just buff them up or put some spray resin to make them shiny again. These I added gold flakes used in nail art. Actually I purchased a lot of different supplies for nail art to embed into the resin. The rhinestones don't work too well as they tend to lose their "dimensional" qualities and look like little round blobs. I can still use them in clay casting I suppose.

 I thought that adding that ring of beads to one of my elongated hearts shuttles would give it the stability I was searching for. While it does look pretty, it also made the shuttle larger and a bit uncomfortable for me to hold. Maybe a re-design on this style would make it workable.

I was tatting with my small Evee shuttle when I ended up overloading it. It ended up springing the tips, but when I "squished" them together, I noticed that if the ends were curved differently, they'd hold more thread.Then I saw some tatting shuttles on Pintrest that led back to a Russian Ankars site. I have no way of purchasing them myself, so I thought to try and make one myself. The basic shuttle shape is exactly the same as previous shuttles, the only difference is to add a "fold" to the tips. While it still has the oval-ish shape of the standard shuttle it does taper to a more rectangular shape when you hold it on it's side.

 

I playing with some molds and decided to make a bottle one. Here are two different sizes.

 The smaller one will make a good earring or charm.

 Using inspiration from Beauty and the Beast from Disney, I thought to make my own rose under glass. I took one of the rose buds from my topiary and cut it short to make it fit. The original container used to make the mold was a contact lens bottle. I threw in some micro beads used in nail art but they went transparent in the resin but left a nice green tint to the bottom of the bottle.

I was so sad when I couldn't find my little fox mold. I did managed find one little charm that used to make new molds so I can now bred the foxes/cats to my hearts content. These two were used to make new molds with the Corn starch silicon technique mentioned above. Some of the molding material clung to these because the putty was still slightly sticky and not ready to be used.

The downside to resin casting is failures. Sometimes I hang on to them because they're too pretty to throw away. I once thought I could "fix" them by adding more resin to reinforce them. I know better now. If your pieces are soft and wiggly, they are failures and they belong in the trash bin. Sad, but true. Most of my soft pieces are a direct result of curing temperatures. Those in my home like to kick the A.C. down to 60 degrees at night, which is when I do most of my casting. I thought of buying a small heater to keep the temperature at 78 degrees, but it would be counter productive, since the A.C. would work harder to bring the temperature down in the house.

Now I'm having to wake up earlier in the mornings to do any casting. Actually, I bought more fans and told those in my home NO A.C. when I'm casting! Being half awake, I still end up wasting resin. I'm going to have to find some middle ground here.

On resin table, I have four shuttles in the works. I found a new tutorial on YouTube, that shows how to create swirls in the resin. The results leave a very pretty swirling effect.