Let's see.... what else can we do with resin?

My fascination with resin always sees me trying something new and different and this week it has led me in a completely new direction.

In the past I've done a lot of casting, including bangles, rings and focal beads. I've also created domed pendants using pendant trays and I've even created my own resin butterfly stickers. But today I've got a couple of pics of a completely different technique: creating 3D jewellery with flat elements!This exotic looking piece reminds me of Correa, a native flower in the southern states of Australia. Sometimes it's called native fuchsia. If you squint when you look at it, perhaps you can see a Correa flower too! Or maybe you see a Christmas Bell, another native Australian flower.

Creating the translucent petals for this technique was a very simple but time consuming process, as each petal is individually formed before being assembled. This technique starts out by painting a thin layer of epoxy resin on the individual pieces of base material (this is crepe paper). I prefer to use ETI's Easy Cast because it's low odour and most importantly, it's clear allowing the true colour of the base to show through.

Then, once all the pieces had completely cured, I placed them next to each other on my work surface, overlapping them slightly and then rolled them up before inserting them into an interesting bead cap.

And here's a simple variation of the same technique using individual petals in large holed cylinder beads. The close up shows the detail much better.I'm still working and playing with this idea so no doubt my technique will change once I work out the best way of doing it, so these two pieces are prototypes but if you're interested in learning this technique, a workshop is planned for the future.

Now let the experimenting begin!

'til next time........