I'm still here! And Some Updates!

Hey guys! I'm still alive! I'm sorry I haven't been posting for a while. Life got a little busy with school, work, and crafting. However, I'm happy to say I passed one of the hardest classes for my school which is physics! Yay!

Anyway, besides school and work, I've been consumed with my battle with resin in which I have been defeated many times! Oh my gosh, it's very irritating! If resin was a person, I would be strangling it! I have a pile of failed resin pieces here. It makes me sad and frustrated that I have more failed pieces than the successful pieces!

RIP

I'm trying to make casted resin charms using variety of molds. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but my pieces are not curing properly. All the charms in my RIP box are not completely hard. I'm trying to rule out all the possibilities from inaccurate measurements, temperature, and resin expiration. So far, I have no luck since I'm keep getting inconsistent results. I bought a new batch of resin so I'm hoping for a miracle with those.

I've been also working on my Charlie Harper needlepoint and I'm almost done, so I don't want to post any photos yet! I will once it's complete, so please stay tuned!

I hope everyone is having a productive week! Thanks for reading! I also want to welcome my new followers!

Happy crafting!

My New Line of Pendants!

Available in my etsy shop! Come check it out!

This is Me! This is What's Behind this Blog!

I always wonder what the author of the blogs I read look like. Is it actually a real person behind the screen, is it a robot? I know a lot of people avoid posting pictures of themselves online and that was the case for me.  Even for my profile pictures, I chose something that was discrete. I'm not quite sure why...Maybe I felt there was the need to separate my blog and my personal life so I can stay focused on the crafts. Or Maybe I felt too exposed if I did that. Anyway, this blog has become so personal and special to me, I feel ready to reveal myself and post a picture for the whole world to see! Yay!

This is me and my love

:-) There it is! Have a great weekend and happy crafting!

My Battle with Resin

Hello everyone! As promised I'm showing you guys my finished Scrabble tile pendants. I'm sorry it took so long! I was waiting to receive my parts to make them into pendants and I had to take all the photos. All of these pendants are available for sale in my etsy shop!

Since I finished making the Scrabble pendants, I've been playing around with resin a lot, and it's been quite a roller coaster ride. There were a lot of bumps I hit along the path...

Working with resin seems very simple; you just mix part A and part B, and pour!....No way! I wish it was that easy. Resin is challenging for many reasons. First of all it takes 24 to 72 hours to cure which leaves a lot of time for errors to occur. For me it was the battle with dust particles and air bubbles. I had to constantly check for these before it was too late. Secondly, there are many factors that can affect the curing process. These include the age of resin, incorrect mixing process of resin and catalyst,  and weather. Resin will not cure properly if the resin is more than a year old, so be careful when you buy it off the shelf at a craft store. Inaccurate measurements, cold and humid weather can also result in uncured resin.

I'm still learning the wonders of this medium with trial and error. Recently I made these pieces using a mold, and I've been having issues with the resin bleeding into the image, even after sealing them. The bleeding makes the paper look wet and you won't know whether you sealed it properly until you pour resin on it.  You can't really tell unless you look very closely, but me being a perfectionist, it bothers me! I also had issues with some of the pieces not curing properly...

You can see the blotchy wet spots on Snow White's face and skirt :-( This would've
been a cute, usable piece if it wasn't for the spots!!

Here are some more pieces I made using candy sprinkles. They turned out ok so I turned some into key chains.

Resin and candy sprinkles.

This is my favorite. Combining resin and miniatures.

I definitely need more practice and more patience. Anyway I hope everyone is having a wonderful week! Thank you for visiting and reading this post!

Happy Crafting!

Charley Harper Needlepoint Update

Since I ran out of thread, I'm going to show you guys my progress...

My progress.

So far, I finished the little fawn and I chose mint green for the background color. There's a lot of background to cover so it took me a while to get this much done. I know there's a lot more to go, but  I'm enjoying it because I find it quite soothing!

I've decided to give this to my little sister when I'm done because she's a fawn and deer fanatic. She's quite obsessed with them, so I think she would appreciate this very much.

Have a great weekend everyone and thanks for reading!

Happy Crafting!

Playing with Resin!

I've always wanted to try working with resin ever since I was a kid. I was especially fascinated with the bottle cap resin magnets. Being a naive child, I though they were made by pouring a load of white Elmer's glue to get the clear resin appearance. Obviously it never worked and I didn't go any further since I didn't have much resources to learn how to. Plus I was too young.

Fast forward to years and years later, I've decided now is the time to learn! I researched on how to make resin charms using a mold. The method seemed very simple, but when I actually tried it, I totally failed. I was ill-prepared and impatient, so I did everything clumsily and messy. I think I was too ambitious making my first resin project using a mold.

Hard to see but there's a lot of air bubbles and the inclusions turned out weird.
The clear ones are the ones I gave up on...

I will re-visit this soon! Meanwhile...

Scrabble tiles!

Using Scrabble tiles, I started making some charms and used resin to get a doming effect on the surface. This will magnify the image I use on the tile. I used vintage inspired images which I glued and sealed onto the tiles.

The resin

Poured the resin carefully to get a dome effect and it worked!

They are covered to avoid any dust getting into the resin as they cure.

Please stay tuned because I will show you guys the finished pendants once I turn them into wearable jewelry. Thanks for reading!

Happy Crafting!

Sister time!

My little sister is home for spring break and since I didn't have work yesterday, I got to spend quality time with her. We took our dog out to the park to walk and play, which was a lot of fun. In the evening, we did some crafting together! She had a bunch of bezels and glass domes left over from her past projects, so we decided to make some pendants together.

We each painted our own artwork on a paper circle we cut out. I'm no painter, so my sister helped me through the process since she deals with this stuff everyday in school. She's very talented and she's studying graphic arts. Here is her website if you would like to see her work: maikn.net

Here's mine, the beloved Totoro.

Totoro Pendant

...And my sister's pendant that she made for her friend.

Shark Pendant

I really enjoyed the day and I'm happy that my sister is home... :-) Have a great week everyone!

Happy Crafting!