My mom and I had another resin day. We were very excited to try several new techniques. The first lesson we learned is not to focus on too many things at once, especially new techniques or things with timing involved.
We were going to do a little bit of regular resin, try coloring resin, use backless bezels, transfers, and texturizing open back bezels. It sounds ridiculous now even as I’m typing it. The real problem was the backless bezels we were using for transfers and texturizing: we needed to let the resin get thick so it didn’t leak out of the backless bezel and also could be peeled off the texturizing sheets. We didn’t know exactly how long to leave it. We checked the resin at one point and thought it needed to be a little thicker. It probably was just right or at least we should have been checking it every few minutes, but we got distracted by too many other things. I am always trying to get better at seeing the lessons as valuable as the successes; this time I am able to.
We used this Becky Nunn tutorial for the transfers. I’ll admit we did not follow everything she said, and that was part of the problem as well. She was doing the transfers with colored resin. I didn’t like how that sort of obscured the transfer image, so I decided to use clear resin. I also didn’t cut the transfer image close like she suggested. I didn’t think I needed to since it was shaped for the bezel. 
I now suspect she used the transfers with colored resin because the background does show in clear resin. It also would have been easier to position the image if it had been cut smaller. The over thickness of the resin was also a problem regarding trying to reposition the image once I dropped it in crooked. Bubbles are also very difficult to get rid of (and are more prevalent) in thickened resin. This experiment is not usable. I didn’t get a good picture of my mother’s transfer. It isn’t perfect, but it is usable. Her positioning is better and fits in the bezel so the background doesn’t show. The bubbles are on the side and less obvious. We decided this technique wasn’t fun, so we won’t be trying it again.
Another lesson is if I plan to deviate from a tutorial, make sure there isn’t a reason for that instruction. Also, if something isn’t fun, let it go.
I also finished saving a piece from a previous resin pour. This was my third time working on it, and already that is a success because I had that much patience. The first time, I had put floral paper in a bezel, then layered in an old lace flower with a vintage crystal finding in the middle. Immediately upon pouring resin over this, the lace flower became a nasty blob. It didn’t occur to me to wash the flower or seal it. Maybe those things wouldn’t have helped. I don’t know how resin reacts with fabric. If I decide to use fabric again, I will do some research.
After it cured, I sprinkled in some glass glitter shards. They weren’t as random as I would have liked because I was trying to cover something, but I thought it looked decent enough, and I covered it with resin. I didn’t dome it because sometimes I like the look of a flat glass finish. But after it cured, I didn’t like that the very tip top of the crystal finding was sticking out a bit. So I did one more pour to dome it a bit. This time the resin didn’t seem to flow across the area as easily, but maybe that is because it wasn’t going into negative space, just sort of open space. I dripped it strategically until it seemed to have good coverage. I feel good about this save. I couldn’t photograph it as pretty as it looks with the shiny glass glitter in a few colors.
We also tried coloring resin. I was going for opaque colors I’d seen on the Nunn Design website. However, I bought a white that appeared to be pearlized instead of flat white. And then I ordered two Ice Resin tints. In addition to the tints possibly being more translucent, we put them in such a tiny amount of resin just to try that we felt we couldn’t add more color to make it darker/more opaque without having a problematic ratio of color to resin that would affect the ability to cure. 
However, we were pretty satisfied with the charms. My mom didn’t like how two of hers looked right away; a green color we bought looked really neon yellow. So she cleaned out that resin she just poured and changed them to red. That was the first time we did that, so that was a good lesson. I think the pearlized white over fire opals really does look like an opal. I like how the moon charm turned out with the fire opals.
We were also going to follow this Nunn Designs tutorial about texturizing resin, another technique that calls for letting the resin get somewhat thick. After the transfer sheet experience, we decided to save that one for the next day.
One thing we should always do is have extra bezels ready to be filled, either with decorative paper in back or by mixing resin with glitter or ice opals.
This turned out very pretty, and we didn’t waste the leftover resin like we did some other times.
The next day we did this Becky Nunn texturizing tutorial that she actually came up with to use up some resin that was getting too thick. 
These pendants took a bit of clean up after peeling them off the texturizing sheets. We feel like they are wearable, but they were too imprecise for us. We won’t be doing this technique again, but we are glad we tried it.
I was pleased that we were not demoralized by our less than perfect outcomes. We had so many ideas, we took a rest break and dug right back into our bezel stash. We actually have two bezels each that we started, but need to do another pour and didn’t save any resin left. I’ll show those when they are finished. We’ve been using the Ice Resin plunger, but have decided we’re not scared to mix our own out of bottles any more. That will take care of the running out of resin issue. I also believe we will waste less. We look forward to continuing our resin experiments.
