Those pesky bubbles!!!

Bubbles are the bane of any resin artist.They appear for many reasons, and generally once they appear there is often little you can do except ignore them or toss the piece.

I've found that there are three main types of bubble problems: the first is the tiny bubbles throughout the resin, making the piece look either ethereal, or cloudy, depending on luck and your intention. The larkspur earrings, above, had bubbles throughout. 

The other day our house was very very hot as the air conditioner was broken. I was going to pour resin; in my wisdom I decided that the resin surely would not need to be heated, since the house was so hot already. I ended up having to toss 2 ounces of the resin because it was so full of bubbles I could barely see the flower! I'm not sure what running the two resin bottles under hot water for  a few minutes does, but when I prepared the next batch, I did heat it up and had no problem.

All the posts I've seen describe several causes of bubbles: not heating the resin; stirring too vigorously; old resin (in my experience, older than 6 months, are a few.

The next couple of posts will discuss two other types of bubbles: reverse mold bubbles under flowers, and surface bubbles you can often "blow" off.

Hint of the day: don't store clear resin jewelry in a gold-or silver-paper covered gift box; the resin will take on a yellow ugly tint.

Thanks for visiting my blog.  Chris