New Techniques- Ice Resin

I bought some Ice Resin a couple of months ago, but I have been afraid to play with it. I tend to do that- buy new things but not get around to them for a while.

I bought some old rusty lids which I showed here and thought this would be something fun to use with the resin. 

Here are the results:

For the left one, I left the lid the way it came. I added a dried flower and some text. For the one on the right, I first used a patina on it to make it almost black. Then I added a flatter dried flower and text.

I mixed the minimum amount of ice resin suggested, (1/4 oz each of part A and part B) let it sit for 5 minutes, then drizzled it over the lids. I had a LOT of resin left, so I half filled some frames which I sell in my bead shop. I still had a lot left so I grabbed a piece of ephemera paper and coated that too! Note to self and others trying resin for the first time: Always have plenty of things prepared to use resin on. You won't believe how far that stuff goes!

I am very pleased at how the pieces came out. Of course you have to allow it to cure for 3 days, but you can work with the pieces (carefully) after 6 hours.  Although things went pretty much faultless, there are a few things I learned in my first experience with Ice Resin.

1. Always have plenty of things ready to coat/fill with resin. I would rather have too many things prepared than to waste unused resin.

2. Always stick loose pieces down. I thought that pouring the resin on the flowers and text would hold them down. Wrong. They tried numerous times to float up on me and I had to use toothpicks to keep pushing them back down.

3. Watch for bugs. Wait, what? Yeah. I had put my Ott lamps over the pieces for a little while after I poured them so that it would help with raising bubbles to the top. I went out of the room for a few minutes and when I came back, a skeeter hawk (dunno if that is their real name but that's what we call them in the South) had landed on the piece of paper. (Guess he was attracted to the light and the paper was like 9 inches below it.) He had gotten into the house earlier last night but was in my living room which has a vaulted ceiling, so I could not get him out. I didn't even know he had made it to my studio/office.  Man that was NOT fun, pulling him out of the resin. I am terrified of bugs. My hubby said I should have just left him there but I don't care to sell resin coated bugs. lol

4. If you do add pressed real flowers as I did, you may want to coat them with mod podge or something before using them. I knew that the resin would make the paper more transparent, but it also really made the flatter flower very transparent. I wish I had coated it. The thicker flower turned out great!

5. Watch videos and read tips online. There are a lot of resin videos out there on the web. After watching a few, I felt confident that I too could use resin! It really is easy and fun!

I can't wait to make some cool jewelry out of the pieces I made :D