If you've got the resin bug and have started making resin charms and cabochons, you no doubt want to turn them into head-turning pieces of jewellery that everyone swoons over. After all, you've spent time and money and poured not only the resin but your creative heart into these pieces, so you want them to look professional and have that exclusive designer look about them. Right? But you probably didn't give too much thought to how you'd assemble the charms once they cured and now you're asking yourself "How do I turn all these charms into jewellery?" Well, there are many ways to assemble your resin casts into jewellery and wearable accessories. You can get as creative as you like with your designs but before you can do that, you'll need some basic methods that will allow you to connect pieces together first.  Here's a few ideas that you can try: Glue on a flat pad components Drill a hole Embed a finding in the resin as it cures Wrap with a filigre......

Attach a playful penguin to your key fob and turn it into a FUNKEE keychain. This anodized penguin has a belly filled with iridescent flashes of brilliant colour giving it the look of dichroic glass or a dazzling opal. But you don't need glassmaking or lapidary skills for this project... You can easily create this dichroic glass look with UV resin and iridescent mylar flakes .  And it will only take you around an hour!  I've used an ultra-fast curing UV resin in this project. But you can use regular UV resin and still get the same results. The benefit of using this faster curing resin are that it has a lot less odour than regular UV resins, it cures FASTER and it only needs a low-wattage lamp (like a UV torch or mini UV lamp) to cure it.  Project Shopping List: Penguin (or other animal) anodized bottle opener/keychain (this one is similar) . Tip: If you wish to use the key chain as a bottle opener, choose one where the bottle lever is separate to the body opening. Fantasy......

Every hobby requires you to outlay some money, whether it be on tools or on consumables. In resin crafting, you really can't avoid spending money on the consumable items like resin, colourants and moulds. They are the things that you will have to replace as you run out. But there are items you can save money on; things like mixing/measuring cups and stir sticks. When you first start out on your resin adventure, you'll most likely use disposable plastic cups and wooden stir sticks. They're inexpensive, convenient and very easy to find. But after a while, you start to see how many of these items you are throwing away and start thinking, there has to be a better way. And there is! You can replace the disposable cups and stir sticks with reusable ones made of polypropylene (PP). Why polypropylene? Because resin doesn't stick to it and it's sturdy so it can be re-used. You can tell if a cup is polypropylene by the recycling symbol on the bottom of the cup. Apart from the......