The tutor was Michael Milloy, a catwalk jewellery designer who has worked with Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs! http://www.econe.co.uk/designers/michael-milloy.html?limit=all
He was really helpful and informative and helped me finish some pieces off when I was struggling. I would definitely recommend the course.
The first thing we learnt was how to mix the resin with the hardner. We used something called Chemfast, which you mix with hardener at two parts to one. You pour the mixture into a plastic cup and stir with a wooden stick for 4 minutes so that it's thoroughly combined. Then you can add coloured dye if you want or just use a clear resin. There are special molds for making resin jewellery pieces, but you can pour it into other items, such as an ice cube tray or make your own mold from perspex. It's advisable to line the mold with vaseline to make sure the pieces pop out easily. If you mix too much resin it gets really hot, so it's also best not to make too much at once.
There are different types of dyes - liquid and powder. With the liquid dye you only need a drop to create a strong colour.
You can embed all sorts of objects into your resin. Some of the things we had to use in the class were feathers, buttons, sweets, glitter, sequins, paper pictures, plastic models. Michael also suggested you could use items from a dolls house such as little plates and teacups.
The first thing I did was mix up some clear resin for 4 minutes and add then stir in some coloured glitter pieces. I poured this into a mold of nine squares and left it to cure. I then mixed up another lot of resin and added some blue powder dye. The powder dyes give a more shimmery effect than the liquid ones. I poured a little bit into a mold consisting of various shapes (the molds were a bit like ice cube trays), added a button to each shape and poured a bit more in. You can pour up to half way if you want and then once it's set you can add another backing colour. I also added some coloured pieces of glass to one mold and had a go at dropping two coloured resin mixes into a cameo together to make a swirly pattern.
If bubbles appear in your shapes, you can poke them with a cocktail stick, use a blow torch on them or a hairdryer.
We were also shown how to make a mold for a bangle from perspex. You cut two strips of perspex to the required length, sellotape each one into a cylinder, one slightly larger than the other, so that the resin can be poured in between the two. We used a glue gun to make sure the cylinders were in place on a further sheet of perspex. You have to be careful to really seal around the bottom of the mold, or the resin can leak out, as I found later on! You can pour in a colour, wait for it to cure a bit and pour another colour on top, to create stripes, or you could pour lots of colours in at once from different sides.
The pieces were left to cure overnight and the next day we sanded and polished them and then made them into jewellery. This was quite time consuming and difficult, especially as I hadn't used any machinery like this since school CDT lessons. We sanded the edges of our shapes using a stick with sandpaper around it (you must use a face mask when sanding resin). Then, we used a machine that polishes the edges, and finally put them into a cleaning machine - the same affect can be achieved by putting your jewellery into some boiling water with fairy liquid and leaving it to soak.
The bangle was much harder to make, because firstly it was difficult getting it out of the perspex mold and had lots of rough edges and secondly you have to sand over the whole object. I used one of those sanding wheels (I'm sure there is a technical name for them), a file and the polisher. I don't think I could make one of these at home.
At the end we used a special glue (I need to check the name) to attach the findings to the resin pieces. I also made a bracelet which involved drilling holes through some of my pieces. This was quite tricky and the tutor ended up finishing the holes for me! I think it's the best piece I made though!
Here are my finished pieces (excuse the picture quality):
 |
| Button cufflinks |
 | ||
| Button rings |
 |
| Multicoloured elastic bracelet (1) |
 |
| Multicoloured elastic bracelet (2) |
 |
| Pendant with coloured glass |
 |
| Gold leaf pendant |
 |
| Button pendant |
 | |||
| Drop dye pendant |
Lastly, the most difficult piece!:
 |
| Bangle (1) |
 |
| Bangle (2) |
 |
| Bangle (3) |
