A touch of play and fantasy

Back to shuttle making. This one I got carried away with the glitter. It is so easy to get carried away with glitter.  I added a regular sewing machine bobbin for a center post substitute. I don't know why, but making that center post seems to be the most draining of all stages of making these shuttles. It's not just that you have to get the dimensions correct, you have to make sure it can maintain the weight and balance of the overall piece. It's such a pain for what amounts to such a small piece of the overall project. At least I finally found the sizing of the shuttle that I wanted, between a SewMate and a Starlit shuttle! Now to begin with the many small motifs to begin embedding into them.

This is my final submission piece for Resin Crafts'  challenge. Originally I wanted to do a 3D magnolia with a small butterfly landing on one of it's petals. Unfortunately, I did not have the correct size doming mold to cast into. I do like the blue metallic thread I used to tat the butterfly. I think it ties the glitter together nicely. The red butterfly was actually supposed to be an orange butterfly. Even after sealing it, the resin turned it darker, so it gives off the appearance of red. It's been so long since I've working with embedding threads into resin, that I had forgotten that bit of info.

A challenge

A request was placed for a resin project to be created with some new bezels that have yet to hit the market. I wrote the person hosting it, and a few weeks later, I received my two bezels.

I want to add some tatting to it. I made a magnolia with a butterfly resting on it. I've made this particular combination before, and have never been able to set correctly. Here's hoping it works out this time, if not I can always paint the resin on to stiffen the lace.

Along with this particular project, I've also decided to make some tatting shuttles. I'm making one with Umbreon, Espeon and Evee. I think I've added too much glitter to it. I wanted the edges to be lined with glitter because the background of the pictures were white and stood out too much against clear resin. There's also a larger shuttle blade with a picture of Mulan, stainglass stylized fanart picture of her. On this particular blade the glitter did stay on the edges, more or less. There's also a key chain with the same stylized picture of Ezmeralda from The Hunchback of Nortredame.

Crumbs and grumbles

Our town has it's own Hobby Lobby store now! It opened up on my Birthday last week. It is a lovely store that has tatting supplies as well as new options for resin casting. I picked up a new type of  silicon molding compound.

It's a liquid that solidifies and I think will be good for 3d castings. I have to make time later to try it out. I also picked up a new type of resin to test.

The box says it cures in 10 minutes and is sandable. I did get a test piece made. It won't work for what I want it, shuttle making, unless its for a flat shuttle. You literally have 3 minutes from start to finish. I used up half the bottle figuring that out. I tried reinforcing with the regular resin I use, but it don't bond with different resin types. So it's more for pieces you want to paint, like clay working.

Once again my littlest child has created havoc with my crafting supplies. This time, she completely emptied all but one box of my resin as well as my mold making supplies. She left me one bottle of hardener, but it does me no good since it's a 1:1 ratio mix and when half of the ingredients are missing, there's no point in hanging on to it. I'm just going to have to get a locking tool center/chests  unless I'm specifically working with it. You'd think a locked room door would be enough....

Then I went to work and when I got home, she struck again. I don't understand why she is so fascinated by it. I used what was salvaged to attach a jump ring to the back of the plates so they can be hung on the wall.Even that was 'disturbed'. When I went to check on them, there were plastic drinking cups that i use to mix resin, sitting on every one of them. They were only half cured, so I did my best to salvage these.

 My options now are basically sanding it flush then putting another very thin layer of clear resin on it to level it all out. Checking on the other standard shuttle shaped molds, I was happy to see they were left relatively intact. This one is small about the size of a clover shuttle. I'm going to have to shape the bottom to the angle needed for tensioning. White stickers need a colored background to stand out. Otherwise it blends in too well. The molding material is wearing out so it has a bunch of small glitches in it. I'll try to fill it in with more resin and use that piece to make a new mold.

But since I'm currently resin-less, it'll have to wait until after rent gets paid to I can restock.$40 worth of resin, wasted. Terrible waste of resources.