Saturday, February 24, 2018

Experiments with Resin



The latest adventure in resin crafting is spoons, and a ring! I finally got a ring mold (size 11). I've tried making ring molds with disastrous results. Although it makes me admire the skill that goes into making good molds.



The bent spoon is filled with dried, crumbled flower petals and tiny, dried flower buds. I'm not sure I like them. 

The ring mold is lovely, but the back of the band is very thin, which makes the rings easy to break. I think I'll try a combo polymer clay/resin one. 

I've also been working on a layered resin series of cartoony animals using acrylic craft paint & glow in the dark pigment powders. I have a rainbow giraffe, a lion, a monkey, an elephant, & some greenery.  I really hope these turn out.

Embroidery

This week has been all about embroidery. I've felt the need to stitch lately, so I'm working on a couple thread paintings. I also stitched a rainbow saber-toothed tiger skull that I'm feeling very underwhelmed over.


 This lovely smilodon skull is stitched in variegated embroidery floss from DMC that I thought was like the regular floss that you can separate into 6 different strands, but no, it's one big thread. I don't usually use more than maybe 3 strands max, and I'm typically using only one, so I have no idea what to do with this absolutely fun and terrific floss. I was thinking of doing a sunset type landscape background, but I think the skull will get lost. (That's why there's a circle in the mouth.) It's already tough to see what it is, according to the Husband and Child. I have no idea what I should do with this one. It's too pretty and was very fun to make to throw it out. Maybe I'll toss it in the shop. It might want to be a bag when it grows up.
 This is the thread painting I'm currently working on. It's in about a 4 inch hoop, so it's not terribly big. It's just the right size for an iron on patch. The circle symbol is a Vegvisir, or runic compass. It's supposed to help prevent getting lost.

I'm currently in the love-hate stage of working on this. I can see that it's going in the right direction, but I don't like how it looks now. I want to get past the sketchy, ugly part to the part where it's finished and I can put it in the shop.

This little fox is just a tad over 1 inch. It's leaning towards wanting to be a magnet, but it might end up as a necklace. Or a tiny iron on patch. In other words, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I like how it turned out though. This is another one that passed through the love-hate phase before the colors blended right and I started to really like it.

Yes, I do use that ugly green fabric for a lot of my embroidery. I have a giant gallon bag full of these squares. They were probably intended to be a quilt, but now they've been rescued from Goodwill and are little canvases for my threaded creations. It's a sturdy woven fabric that sits nicely in a hoop. It holds its shape and has enough body that I don't have to worry about reinforcing the finished product too much. It's great for thread painting, where I am filling up the whole stitched area. As much as I think the pattern is god awful ugly, I'm going to miss these squares when I've used them all up