I'll Introduce a Wonderful Resin and Pressed Flower Artist; and GOOFS with Resin and Flowers, and Repairs

   I'm proud to be able to present a well known Etsy pressed flower artist whose work I  really love: Dianne of  A Gift For All Seasons 
http://www.etsy.com/shop/giftforallseasons

 Dianne has been working with pressed flowers for many years, and excels in the craft. Her work has been featured in major magazines and she has sold lots of her work. I'm proud to say I'll be featuring an interview with her in one of my next posts. Her flowers are presented with both resin and  glass. The above, one of my absolute favorites, is resin, as are the next two:

This piece is so great, and shows what I love the most about Dianne's work:  her color sense.  She knows just what colors go together, and how--something I'm still learning. Aren't the graduated shades from pink to purple lovely?  The next earrings show same expertise:

The bright colors in the earrings complement each other wonderfully.  I'm looking forward to the interview--I have lots to learn from Dianne!


Now, for GOOFS:
I'll admit resin can be hard to work with, and easy to mess up. What I like, though, it that many of the goofs are just as easy to repair. Of course, sometimes there is no repair, except the "circular file."

That being said, I thought I'd show a few goofs, or potential ones, and how I've learned to fix or save them.  All the "goofy" pictures are mine; no one else would claim them anyway!

First: a "foreign object" found after you've poured the resin and it's dried, or at least too late to fish the offender out. The day I poured clear resin over the flowers above, I started out with just a couple. My dog was shedding that day, and even though I blew off my workspace with canned air before pouring, I found some tiny hairs the next morning in the piece.  I had three choices:  sand down to the hair and repour (making sure the dust from sanding is cleaned off--I use a baby wipe;)  toss the piece, or what I did, fake it by adding more flowers.  I actually like this piece better than the initial one.  

However, sometimes a bit of something is just too deep to sand:

 In the blue larkspur piece above, which I poured a couple of days ago, there is a little piece of stem that crept in.  It's way too deep to sand. Normally I would toss the piece; however it's one of what will be a pair of earrings that otherwise turned out beautifully; moreover I don't have any more matching larkspur in that size or shape. So I've decided, after review by my resident expert (my hubby) to ignore the piece and make the earrings anyway. If one looks, one can see the stem. But after all, us humans aren't perfect anyway!

 This black piece is bumpy and I unfortunately left it late (by about 2 months!) to correct it.  If one sands off the bumps and repours within a few days, it works much better. This late, it might or might not show. I've just left this one for my "orphans" sale bin at the next craft fair.

Which brings me to a very important point:  new resin pieces are not as hard as they feel/look for at least a week. If you accidentally have one piece touching another, they will become bonded. They scratch ever so easily in the first week. And, heaven forbid, if when you're sanding/cutting edges off and a scrap resin falls on a new jewelry piece, well, it has become part of it. Once the resin is about two week old, it is tough, and by the time it's a month old, the resin is extremely resistant to even determined scratching.

Sometimes a big bubble will form on the surface of a piece then you're not watching, and then break.  I treat that just like the scratches:  sand, clean, and repour--generally you can't even tell where the bubble was. Resin can be forgiving.
    The piece below shows another hangup:  it  had a second coat of resin to make them shiny after they came out of the mold and the edges are uneven.  The edges worry some. I just clip them down, use a sanding stick (about 200 grit ) to even them out; and if needed paint a little tiny bit of resin over the sanded edges--often it doesn't even show!

Often I have a piece of plant that either floats to the top of the resin and sticks out.  You don't want to leave the plant exposed to air;  it will rot. I just sand it down, if possible, and pour another layer. Or if worst comes to worst and I really like the piece, add another petal then pour another layer!

When you pour resin in a mold, you should pour carefully  (in the final pour if there are layers) right up to the top so it is a little rounded. Otherwise you have to sand the edges, which can lead to needing resin to cover the sanding, ....and on and on.

Thank you so much for visiting my blog.  I welcome your comments and suggestions, and I'd love to feature your work too!  Chris