Most of my sewing adventures recently have been clothes repair which is not the most glamorous stuff to take photographs of, though I will say it is rather satisfying to have saved two pairs of jeans from the bin! If anyone has any resources on repair (preferably repairs of the invisible/less visible kind as I am not a fan of ‘obviously patched’) they’d like to share, please do as I am keen to learn more. In the meantime though, shiny resin photos for you!

I’m really enjoying playing with colour, texture and glitz with the resins. I thought I’d try out a slightly different resin type – a casting resin rather than a coating resin – to see whether it did make any difference to the final product. It did – just not in the way it was supposed to. For some reason, the resin decided to just not set properly. It could have been an issue with the ratios though I will say getting the exact volumes mixed doesn’t seem to be as crucial as many resources would have you believe. I have since used this resin under similar conditions and had no issues with it curing properly.

I do wonder if the culprit might have been the addition of some fountain pen inks. I mentioned last time that one of the Diamine inks underwent a rather drastic colour change on addition to the resin. I had tried adding Blaze Orange and a few others as I didn’t have many micas to colour the resin in this shade but I wonder if that may have contributed to what was the sticky, mulchy bottom to this pot…

I liked the colours so much I tried remaking it in the coating resin with no problems and no addition of any inks. I love the colour structures you get in these pieces. It’s like space dyeing where no parts of the yarn are quite the same just with more glitter and sparkles.

A few of these pieces are malformed as I just poured out whatever leftover resin I had and it didn’t fill the mould though I am finding the silicone moulds ridiculously fragile. Even my more expensive mould seem to have deformed slightly on the edges after just a few uses and I would advise being very cautious about being lured into what seem like bargains online!

I need to have a go at polishing some of these and sanding off a few of the bubbles. I still can’t work out if a lot of the bubbles are coming from degassing from the pigments   or it is more to do with the resin. Working at warmer temperatures helps significantly. I’ve now got a very silly set up where I use a heat mat to keep the moulds warm while I’m pouring into them which really seems to help.

Lots of lovely shiny things – I particularly like the flakes in the pot. It definitely looks like it needs a good scrub from the photos and unfortunately some of the bubbles are a bit more noticeable then I had hoped but I think some of this will go away with a bit of finishing work.

For now though… shiny!