Pretty pretties

I'm super duper excited!  A little experiment of mine has worked and I could jump up and down and shout but was also filled with awe and went 'OooooooOOOOoooooh!' quite a lot! 

I've been wanting to use resin to make jewellery for quite a while but after the moulds and resin went AWOL in the post I gave up for a bit.  Then I came across a few bags of really pretty postage stamps and wanted to use glass or resin to make them into jewellery and then came the difficult part.  I have a fair this Friday and me being me wanted the new things ready in time for the fair so I scrabbled around the internet trying to find a supplier of clear resin or glass blocks, I found some and ordered them and then realised they probably won't arrive in time as they're coming from America.  Plan B seemed to be the order of the day so I trawled the internet again and finally found a UK supplier, but they were on holiday...things were not looking good.  I then found another UK supplier and ordered, only to get a holiday reply email after my paypal order had gone through.  Things were not looking good.  So.  Plan C.  I make J take me out to a store with a large craft section to try and see if they do anything similar to what I wanted as right now I've got two small orders coming and no idea of whether they will be here in time to make any jewellery for Friday.

Score!  J spots some crystal resin that you mix up and pour into moulds so I scour the shop and find a silicone chocolate mould and hey presto I get started!  I put some stamps in the square and round moulds and glitter in the hearts as they weren't big enough to hold stamps.  You have to leave them dry for 24 hours before popping them out and it was fascinating to watch them change over the hours.  Here's the photos:

Just finished adding the glitter and stamps to the resin in the mould

24 hours later still in the mould

Just popped out of the mould

A more snazzy instagram photo of the finished pieces!

I can't tell you how happy I am with them!  The square ones will be necklaces and the round and heart shaped ones will be rings but I may keep some heart shaped ones to make into necklaces too.  Here's one I made up earlier:

square piece of resin with a Chile stamp on a teal coloured organza ribbon

Need to get the others set up as jewellery now but I've been busy making more resin and they're all poured in the moulds with stamps and glitter and sequins and I can't wait for tomorrow night to unwrap them and see how pretty they are!

So I've learned:

• don't try and make something brand new for a fair if you need to order in supplies and you've got only a week left!
• do try out something new, it's fun and you just don't know what's going to happen!

I'm just glad I've turned what was a very frustrating situation into a really exciting one!  It's like a science experiment as I've changed the way I've added the glitter to the mixture and have found some new moulds so hopefully I'll have some more exciting and pretty pictures to show you tomorrow!  Tune in for the next exciting instalment!