What do you do when you've made a resin bangle and it hasn't turned out very well? Maybe it's filled with bubbles, or the colour isn't what you want, or there's some other blemish that you wish you could hide. Today I'm going to show you a trick I sometimes use to disguise imperfections. And it looks absolutely stunning! I'm starting out with a bangle that is full of bubbles. Other than the bubbles, there's nothing wrong with the bangle. Here's a shopping list of what you'll need for this technique: Piñata Alcohol inks  (I prefer Piñatas because they are highly saturated, vibrant colours) Piñata Claro Extender Piñata Metallic Rich Gold Krylon Triple Thick Crystal Clear Glaze Plastic drinking straw Disposable gloves (use nitrile gloves if you're allergic to latex) Rubbing alcohol for clean up How to Paint a Resin Bangle with Alcohol Ink This is a messy process and I like to work on a non-stick craft sheet because it's so easy to wipe cle......

At the end of May I'll be hosting lots of my family when they all come to celebrate with me. It has been just the push I needed to get some spring cleaning done and also to tackle some repair jobs. Of course, it is actually autumn in the southern hemisphere so technically it's autumn cleaning, but you get what I mean. We've been working on making the spare rooms more guest friendly and adding a few touches to make them feel more welcoming. When three of my children left home last year (ugh, empty nest almost... don't like it at all) but the girls relocated all their personal things to their new homes and there was just no personality left. So we're working on that and here's the first item to get a spruce up. I bought this little lotus votive holder at a bargain price from my local Pillow Talk shop. It had some slight damage (hence the big price markdown) but the colour is perfect for one of the rooms. And it only needs a simple fix. A touch up with Piñata Alcoh......

Yesterday I shared a pic of the luminary I'm planning to use for the dinner table for my birthday celebration.  Sadly, I only have one purple light set and I need several to get the look I want. I've tried the white LEDs with all the other crystal shred colours I have but none of them give off the purple glow like this one does. And I really WANT purple! I LOVE purple..... and I'm determined to have it! And I have a simple solution to get it..... ..... with Jacquard Piñata Alcohol Ink ! This has got to be one of the easiest things I've ever done. A quick coat of Passion Purple on each of the LEDs is all that was needed! And all lit up, the colour is almost identical to my purple set. Yippee! I'm testing them tonight to see that the colour doesn't fade from the warmth the LEDs emit. They don't get hot but I just want to make sure that they will make it through the night. Here's keeping my fingers crossed! 'Til next time..... If you can't get enoug......

In a recent post, I shared with you how I prep my marbled Friendly Plastic cutouts ready for jewellery making. And yesterday I finally had some time to transform those demo samples into pieces of jewellery so that you can see how your marbled cutouts can be utilised. So, today it's candy time..... some super easy and sweet ideas to turn your marbled Friendly Plastic into gorgeous jewellery! First up, a simple pendant hanging on a chain. For this piece I've used findings from Plaid's Fresh range: a petal shaped pendant, a circular frame and silver chain. Plaid has done all the hard work here as these components are designed to work together. To personalise the piece, I added some white rub ons and clear crystals to give it some added interest and complement the Friendly Plastic hearts without overpowering them. Aqua Hearts The second piece was a lucky find. This bracelet watch (minus its workings) was the perfect size for the small oval cutout - it just snapped into place......

The most wonderful things happen when you make mistakes. Earlier in the week I was telling you about how one of my ugly duckling resin castings turned into a beautiful swan, in the form of a necklace that both my daughters now want to lay claim to. Today I want to tell you about another one of those less than perfect casting moments and how some creative thinking brought about a new colouring idea. Here's how the story goes: I was casting a resin bangle that I had coloured with Pearl pigment. It was really pretty in the bangle mould and I was very happy with the way it looked. But I had mixed a little more resin than I actually needed for the bangle and I had just enough left to pour a thin layer into each cavity of one of my favourite Krafty Lady art moulds , 5 Dominoes ( AM245) . I thought this beautiful pearl colour would make a great background with something embedded on top of it. But it was such a disappointment! The colour was so transparent that it completely lost its ef......

I've been playing with a new resin colouring idea recently. The idea came about when I had some casts I didn't particularly like. But I'm a great believer that most things are rescuable. Not too many of the things I make end up in the bin, although it does happen occasionally. As most of my students will tell you, my motto is that there is no such thing as a disaster - only opportunities to create new ideas. And that is how this technique came about. Unhappy with the colour and texture of a cab I had cast, I set about trying to improve it and added layer upon layer of colour until I was happy with the result. I wish I had a "before" shot to show you because it was really ugly. But now it is one of my favourite pieces! It's wired together with a beautiful brass stamping which incorporates a wrapped bail to thread an interesting, fine chain through. It looks quite like an heirloom piece and if my daughters have their way that's exactly what it will become......

I know it's been a while since I last blogged, but all I can say is that I'm back , fresh from the CHA (Craft and Hobby Association) Winter Trade Show and the retail Craft Supershow, and rearing to go in the New Year. It was a busy time in the lead up to the show as I had a lot of pieces to prepare for displays some of which you were able to take a little peek at. Some of those pieces might even make it onto my blog later in the year but this week it's bangle week at Mill Lane Studio and I'll be sharing lots of different bangles with you including some wooden bangles. Today it's resin bangles and here's a pic of some of the many bangles I created whilst demoing for Environmental Technology Inc at CHA last week. Sorry about the overexposed photo - I had just a moment to take a snapshot and no time to adjust the settings on my camera and as a result I've spent way to long in Photoshop fixing it. So here's a tip for those of you who add photos to your blog ......

Brrrr..... it's been a cold winter here in South East Queensland. Yes, I know, I know, we have no idea what cold is here in our little corner of the world, but then, we are not geared up for cold weather. Night time temperatures have regularly hovered just a few degrees above zero and that's pretty chilly when you don't have any heating. But spring is not too far away in the southern hemisphere and to banish away the winter chills, I've decided to bring spring forward a month and let the butterflies take flight in search of spring blossom. My butterflies are all breaking free of their chrysalis - their winter nest, so to speak - in search of all the wonders or spring..... blossoms, love, sunshine. Yes indeed, warm sunny days. I'm looking forward to those! The base of my butterfly chrysalis is a Pavlova Magic container. Now you have to be an Aussie or a Kiwi to know what that is. Pavlova is kind of like our national dessert and we both lay claim to having invented i......

Here in Australia the leaves are turning and winter is fast approaching. We've farewelled the warmth of summer days and we're enjoying the last bit of colour autumn has to offer. It is my favourite season of the year. In Queensland, we're lucky to have a dry, mild winter - no winter gloom in the Sunshine state - and we only have two seasons: the wet one and the dry. We don't see a changing of the seasons and we seem to move almost seemlessly from summer to winter. It is wonderful to still be experiencing warm days in the middle of May even though the nights are now chilly. The only sign that winter is approaching is the shorter days. But having grown up in a cooler clime, I sometimes miss the changing of the seasons....... no colourful leaves in autumn and no deciduous trees in winter. So today's offering is an ode to those days of my youth when I experienced a true autumn - where the lush green leaves of summer gave way to the fiery shades of red, orange and yell......

Today I thought I'd share just a little taste of what I've been working on this week - can't show you the whole card as I'm still perfecting the background technique but I can share the Friendly Plastic tile on the card front. My original plan was to use it as a pendant but it worked really well on this card - so the jewellery piece will have to wait. Reading back over my last couple of Friendly Plastic Tile posts, I decided it was silly to hoard my Mother of Pearl sticks, even if I only have a limited supply of it. After all, what's it good for if I don't use it?!! So the base of this piece is MOP and it looks so pretty. Look how well Friendly Plastic takes texture! After heating the Friendly Plastic, I've stamped into the surface using a deeply etched stamp and then painted it with alcohol inks. I'll have to try this with some of my texture mats too but it should work just as well as stamps.... but that's an experiment for another day! The lovely s......

This week the wilds of Africa have been calling and I've been exploring some other design ideas for Friendly Plastic tile jewellery ..... this time, dramatic black and white. My black and MOP sticks are still on the endangered list so I'm preserving my dwindling stocks of them. No worries! I've improvised and used the black and white backs of coloured sticks as the front again. This is a great way to use up surplus colours but just make sure that you sand away the metallic finish so that the plastic is exposed - it will give you much stronger bond when attaching one layer to another. To create the pattern, I heated each 3" stick with the heatgun until softened and then pressed an uninked stamp into it. Next, I plunge the stamp and plastic straight into cool water for about 30 seconds so that the stamp releases easily from the plastic (make sure your stamp is unmounted if you're placing it in water). I used Pinata inks to paint the depressions because they have both......

Wow, Friendly Plastic's fun!! Is there no end to the ways this incredible material can be used?!! If you've been following my blog you'll have noticed quite a few posts about Friendly Plastic recently. (And if you haven't been following my blog, then click on the Friendly Plastic label in my index to see what I've been up to.) I've used it on card fronts, in jewellery pieces and also to cover pens. I've had a play with Jana Ewy's Fracture and Fusion technique, I've made beads using a couple of different bead making techniques, I've moulded it and I've marbled it. So this week I set out to use it differently yet again and I've gone in another direction altogether. This technique works best with light coloured Friendly Plastic sticks, as in the sample above. To create this piece I used a white-backed stick as the front of the tiles because I was running low on MOP and didn't want to use it up on an experimental piece (the coloured side......

Day 11 is here and the Pipers weren't able to make an appearance either so I've smooshed a la Tim Holtz again but this time I've swapped the bold red, black and gold for delicate blue, white and silver. Now the photos just don't do this card justice - it was very tricky to photograph and I might try to get some better photos which I'll add later. In real life, the card has a real WOW factor and yet it's deceptively simple! The base of the card is made of acetate and the front was run through the Cuttlebug and then I've painted the depressions of the pattern with white Pinata alcohol ink and Claro Extender - this is the hardest part of the card! Actually, it's not that hard really, just a little time consuming, but I think it's worth the effort. Unfortunately, the photo doesn't show the embossed texture, only the painted pattern. If you didn't want to try painting and embossing the acetate, you could try stamping an image with Opaque White Sta......

It's Day 10 of my Twelve Days of Christmas event but I was unable to book the "10 Lords a' Leaping" (it seems they are heavily booked at this time of the year!) so I hope you'll enjoy what I did with Tim Holtz' alcohol ink smooshing technique instead. This technique is so easy and is really fun to do. You begin by drawing squiggles of your chosen alcohol ink colours on a non-stick craft sheet, sprinkle a little Blending Solution around, lay down a piece of gloss cardstock on top and then turn it 90 degrees. Lift and admire the beautiful and totally unpredictable patterns (no two will ever be the same!). Add some more blending solution and place another sheet of cardstock on the craft sheet and you'll have a second, lighter version of the first background - great way to coordinate your cardstock! I used Red Pepper, Pitch Black and Gold Mixative. The Cuttlebug makes another appearance today - I just don't know how I ever managed without this nifty littl......