I hope you aren’t tired of my jewellery yet, because I’m once again firmly stuck in the crafting phase of the pandemic and I have no interest of getting out of it soon. For one thing, there are worse coping mechanisms (just don’t ask my bank account. OTOH there’s little else to spend my fun money on right now). For another, I end up with cool jewellery. I can start something and then before I notice or have time to worry, it’s midnight and I go to bed happy.

As I mentioned before, I’m currently working with UV resin, which also means I watch a lot of UV resin tutorials on Youtube. Here’s an interesting divide: Tutorials for epoxy resin, especially lamps and such are often by American guys with huge tool shops that make me constantly unhappy, because I lack the space and probably 20k to blow on the machines.

See for example this guy, who does make cool stuff:

UV resin artists OTOH tend to be female and Japanese. You can watch their videos for inspiration or pure relaxation, like this lady’s videos:

I’m wondering if it has something to do with culture, but also space, of which Americans outside the big cities seem to have more.

Anyway, I wanted to show you what I came up with:

These two pairs are made with nail art transfer foil. They’re not perfect yet as the transfer foil is tricky and needs some practise, but I do like them. I’m currently wearing the gold ones, which look really classy.

The next two pairs also belong together, one being trial and error the other being what I actually intended.

Don’t get me wrong, these are perfectly lovely earrings (though the right one is a bit bubbly from the flowers). They are just not what I had planned- I first made a smaller square with the gold foil, which was then embedded in the larger square… Of course the small clear square vanished completely in the clear resin, making that extra step pretty much redundant.

Back to square one (haha). This time I mixed golden pigment in with the small square and now I get those crisp geometrical lines.

I need to remember to dip the flowers in resin before I embed them. Too many bubbles, but I still really like the simple elegance here.

Than goodness they came out fine, because the third project for that night surely didn’t.

I was using up some UV resin that I still had, and I still had it for a good reason: it’s horrible. I have no idea how something can be that thick and runny at the same time. As a result there are tons of irremovable bubbles but it also kept flowing over the sides, making the whole piece clunky. I was looking for some delicate elegance, I got this. I tried again yesterday and this time the results are much more what I was looking for:

Pendant with matching earrings. The colour is a bit dark in the pic, they’re the same midnight blue as above, a pigment that I absofuckinglutely love. These pieces also show one of the great advantages of using UV resin: precise control. I can add the wire and the pearls and the beads and place them exactly where I want them.

And last but not least, a completely different technique: Cherry blossom earrings

I like earrings where it#s clearly a pair, but two different designs. These are made by forming the wire into petals and then adding a thin layer of resin. Here you really have to get the consistence right. I first tried with the above mentioned blue pigment, but adding pigment made the resin too thick, so I had to try again with clear ink for resin. I’m not completely happy with how the flowers are dangling on the chain and might try to change that again. I also think I need a matching necklace.