Resin jewellery

I seem to be running with an adornment theme at the moment. Last weekend I did a resin jewellery workshop with BQueen, held at the Barnes store on King St, Newtown. The main surprise was how easy it was. I thought that working with resin involved noxious fumes, the need to work outside and a fair amount of mess. It's none of those. You can make resin jewellery at your kitchen table with a couple of plastic cups and a mould. We used a special type of resin that can only be used for jewellery. It sets in 15-20 minutes and dries to a champagne colour, however it's easy enough to add pigments. A different and more difficult to use resin is required for bowls and when you want a clear product. The course was three hours long, and gave us enough time to make two bracelets and two rings (or more if you had spare resin). We worked with two batches, so had two opportunities to try out different effects. We then had time to sand back one bracelet before finishing. The sanding isn't much fun, but doesn't take too long. I'm looking forward to trying it at home and being a bit more adventurous with the dyes. We were also shown how to make our own moulds, which was fortunate as most of the standard moulds didn't fit my 'man-hands' (at least not without rearranging my bones). The main thing I didn't like, which I hope I can improve on, was the tiny bubbles in the resin, especially where you pour, and the slightly dull finish. Apparently the clear resin gives you a much better finish, but it also takes several hours to set. Overall pretty happy and I'll definitely try it at again at home.