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.

Back at it

Now that I finally picked up some more supplies..let's get to work!

It finally clicked in my mind on how to create a better stability with the longer shuttles. It was so obvious I could kick myself.  I also picked up a palate of decorating chalks to test for color tinting. I could just use the transparent dyes made for resin, but part of the fun is experimenting. I have used eyeshadows before and they work great, but sometimes you don't want it all sparkley.

I picked up this cute little cat mold on Etsy from Decoratewithdetails. Honey says it looks like a fox more than a cat. It doesn't matter it's a cute little charm maker and I've already made a few!

A week from now is my birthday! I've been putting off opening up my own Etsy shop with these shuttles I'm making. I have four done and since I'm basically talking all next week off, I'm going to make more. So as a heads up, so to speak, for those who read this blog, I'm going to list four shuttles at midnight on October 17th. The remainder will go 'live' that following Saturday. So if you're interested that's when to look for them. The link for the shop. Right now it only has a resin pendant in it, but I'll be adding more soon.