Pages 05/26/08

Hey! Thanks for all the comments. It was fun to see that people actually *do* stop by and read what I've been up to. *Waving* So, it's a long weekend and my husband and I spent alot of it building a raised bed in the back garden. Man-oh-man was it alot of work. It between that (and recovering because we are BOTH so out of shape) I managed to finish up some bottlecap magnets I'd been working on. A couple weeks ago I played around with my first batch of 2 part resin. I read the instructions, prepared everything and anxiously went to work. A few things I learned: 1. Make sure you GLUE down your images inside the bottlecaps because the will LIFT as the resin settles. 2. Make sure to mix your resin more even though you think you mixed enough. Under mixed resin NEVER dries and your pieces will be useless. I learned the hard way. 3. Put a cover or something over the drying bottlecaps. You'd be surprised at how much crap floats in the air and settles on the wet resin. 4. Have a good long handled lighter ready to heat the tops and pop the air bubbles (it's really cool how easy this is) 5. Be sure and go back to make sure the air bubbles are all gone because they will magically reappear if you aren't vigilant in popping them.

Resin, part two! This time I'll nail it! Last week I pre-punched some images and glued them into the bottlecaps. (Those puppies are not going to float ANYWHERE now.) My puncher isn't too precise and there was alot of white paper showing so I covered and sealed the edges with some glitter glue. I let these dry really well. This time I mixed the resin VERY well and was really carefule with the measurements. I let them settle and waved a lighter over the tops to pop the bubbles. After about 4 rounds of popping, I covered them with a large pot lid and let them dry 24 hours. The next day, I superglued on some heavy duty magnets. Overall, I am very happy with the results this time. Next resin adventure will be some molded jewelry.