Picture testing

I made a mold that is more or less keychain sized out of the hard case from my Ipod Nano. It does have the grooves from where the two plastic pieces come together. I plan on sanding that down and making a more permanent mold out of the finished piece before I drill in the hole for the jump ring. This time the test will be on pictures. One set, the first keychain, will be sealed with ModgePodge. The second, smaller oval, will not be. One thing to note is that the paper these photos were printed on were done on my Polaroid Pogo Printer which uses Zink paper. This paper is heat responsive, meaning no actual ink. If this trial comes out it'll give a no glue sealing option to photographs. And since the size of the casting is small anyways, this works out great since the paper only comes in 2X3 size paper.
One other thing I was working on is sealing some more tatting with the glue. When I made a motif of tatting with UV resin, the lighter shade went transparent with the resin as it cured. I'm hoping that by sealing it, it will retain its true colors, as they are vibrant and beautiful.As you can see above the modge podge sealed picture came out somewhat washed-out. The smaller oval on the left was has no sealant. It came out with the colors more true to life. Now I have a new way to encase photographs or small graphics with no need to seal. The tatting also did not go transparent when I applied Modge Podge to it. Now I know what I did wrong when I did my first project, I didn't seal the tatting. I will have to do another test with the white flower in resin and see how that goes.

I decided to do a full puffy heart of this one. Primarily because the tatting stuck out past the edges of the pendant confines. The problem I'm having is joining the two halves together, I kept getting air bubbles between them. Those are next to impossible to pop since they do lay one on top of another. I'm going to try leveling out the top of the pendant and then recasting to get a doming effect.

On the hunt

It is so hard to find a mold for a keychain. I don't want to drill a hole into the resin and attach a jump ring, although this would be the easiest way to do it. There was a technique showed on the UV resin website but she just laid a ring on the top layer of the resin before it cured. That may work for some pendants but I don't think it will with keyrings because they are subjected to much more abuse. I suppose I'll have to find one with a close enough shape and make a mold of it. I also have to make sure it will be deep enough to work but still be thin enough to not be bulky.
We got some buttons from Disneyland and I'm making a button mold out of this one. I did finally find my Pogo printer power cable so maybe I can do pictures without have to seal it since the paper it uses is no ink but rather heated color crystals.I will have to do some sample prints and put it to the test. Finally a purpose for this little toy. I would have taken it on the family trip to Disneyland but I couldn't find the power cable and the battery life on this is horrid. Like my husbands cell phone..*laughing*

Failure..er learning moments

They all came out too obscured. I should have stayed clear and waited to play with color for another time. Or perhaps another layer. If there had been no objects to embed, they would have come out really pretty. But while you can still sort of make them out, it's not to what I had in mind. now let's think of the positives, I now have a heart template to trim future pictures with. The facets on the 'ring' did come out, although I broke the mold pulling it out of the encasing. I know how high up with the molding putting to engulf an item to make a mold. Oh and let's not forget, I know how to get a sky blue/lilac with my eyeshadows.
It's still early enough in the morning that I can tat up another magnolia and redo the casting in clear before we leave for our vacation. Making that mold will take about 10 minutes, tatting an hour roughly, and mixing and laying the resin another 10 minutes roughly. Yes, it can be done.