Jewellery making and repair

Hi Everyone,

So it is that I have been experimenting with resins for jewellery. I am mostly making pendants atm, but I do intened to make full sets, once I quite master the process. I have attempted bracelets, but they are very, very hard to get right! I will make some placemats soon too.

I have repaired and maintained jewellery for quite some time, it is reasonably easy and does not need much skill. I keep all the broken bits and bobs together in one jewellery box and work on them now and then to produce new pieces.

I buy bags of broken jewellery and usually can fix them or use them with other pieces. It's mostly working with jewellery pliers, tweezers and the various attachments and by soldering.

Some of my kit, it will be relevant later:




Well, there is quite a bit of stuff you need, but once you have got it that is super cool, for you can use it over and over!

Kit:



Here is my process today, the resin bitby bit...




So, you need to have all prepared, I use petals for a nice clear resin pendant, have to be mod podged before going in, thenarranged as carefully as possible. I also do swirly colour pendants. I find two is a good number of colours, but sometimes three. I mix the resin with the hardener.

I then carefully place them to warm in a bowl of warm water to get all the bubbles out. For why?

Bubbles are the enemy!! It helps eradicate them...

I then pour a little into pots. The number of pots depends upon how many colours I am using, so I mix the colour with the mixed resin, only a little colour and a little resin is needed. The 'main' pot still carries the clear resin and is used most, the colours are pipetted into clear resin.

If you are using liquid colour you can skip that, but I prefer powders as I already have plenty of different colours from my soap making days.

I then pour the clear resin into the moulds/forms, I put a little in then add a few petals or colours then a little more, more petals colours until it is full. If I am arranging, I use a pin and push the petals around. I also swirl the colours sometimes, but you do need to be careful not to produce bubbles.

Then I wait 24 hours and I have new pendants! It took about an hour to prepare and make these. Two good points here, ventilate!!!! Also, one hour is about the going rate before it hardens too much to be workable.

Here is one I made from last week, now the jewellrey kit comes out, pop a chain, loops and snatcher on and it's wearable!!!!





Ta-da!!!!

Celia xx