Lately, I've been working on making things out of resin besides belt buckles. I've made a bunch of Tiny Pins, cuff links, and also the earrings pictured to the left. I hope to have more new and interesting things coming soon. Any other suggestions? I'd love to hear what you'd like to see from my shop. Please leave a comment here.

Getting Ready for the Holiday Season

I've made lots of updates to my Etsy shop over the last month, and it may be more full now than it has ever been. Please checkout my latest listings here.

The picture to the left is an older belt buckle design that I have revisited. Hey, people like it, so why not? As all of my resin pieces, this one's a little bit different than the others.

Koi Belt Buckle

I thought I was trough with making resin belt buckles, until I finished this particular buckle the other night. It turned out just great. I just ordered a bunch more metal findings, so I can start making more of them again.

Third Semeseter

Once again I have found myself way too focused on school work over the last few months to think about any projects outside of my assigned work. Since I don’t have many new things to first talk about, I would like to take this opportunity to share this older piece, it was a one-off "experiment" (from sometime in 2006). It’s a brooch that was cast from epoxy resin. It features a 4mm purple cubic zirconia suspended in the clear material, as well as imitation gold leaf. I wasn't sure how I felt about this piece at first, but it has grown on me over time and now I love it. I’m thinking about continuing this idea in a smaller, more polished form (this one is 45mm in diameter and the finding on the back is a cheap craft store finding) and in different 2D shapes.

This is one school project that I managed to get a photo of from this semester that really shows the contrast of the things I find myself working on in my free time and the thing I have to work on at school. Correctly fitting the gemstone to the setting and evenly spacing the silver components is of utmost importance. I find gemsetting to be very challenging, and was surprised with myself for doing as well as I did on this 4 claw construction and setting.

I hope to share more photos of my school work once the year is over, and my projects are returned to me. Please also take note of the new link to the left that shows photos of the majority of the work that I've done over the last three years.

Sales Outside of Etsy

Although Etsy is has a great set up to its shops and it's a great way to market my work, I've also been selling a lot outside of my shop there (or at least "a lot" in relation to what I thought I'd be selling). I've done a couple of custom buckles (two of which were talked about in previous posts) and I've also sold one of the more creative buckle that I've come up with. Hopefully the trend of selling 1-2 every couple of weeks continues for a little while... but to be completely honest, I'm going to be happy to move on to other mediums. Resin is quite toxic, and although I use a mask to filter out the fumes... it still makes me nervous to work with it... especially as often as I have been.

More Belt Buckles!

Unfortunately, while trying to fix up the last Ride Theory belt buckle, I made it even worse! Here's another attempt at using the same logo. This time instead of just using one piece of paper, I cut out the logo into two different parts and also backed it with another white square. I like this version a lot better. You can take a closer look by clicking the image to the left.


Here's another buckle I just completed for a local musician who liked my work on RT's buckle. It's just a simple white square set in clear resin with resin tinted with blue pigment in the background. In the second picture you can see the finding I used on both pieces. The stainless steel buckles are secured with Permatex Perma Poxy so neither of them are going anywhere this time!

Resin Belt Buckle

I made this belt buckle by first modifying one of the logos by boyfriend uses for his band (with permission of course). I then printed it on photo paper and set it in resin. It has a stainless steel belt buckle finding on the back... well, it had a stainless steel belt buckle finding on the back, just before taking this photo it snapped apart. I still have to figure out how to smooth down the edges and of course re-attach the finding, but hopefully it's totally complete and ready to be sold soon at one of The Ride Theory's shows. Oh yeah, just a quick thanks to my sister Jill for modeling this buckle.

Sterling and Yellow Resin Ring

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started this ring, but I decided to go with it anyway. It's not perfect and I kind of like it that way, but there are some things that could be better. The inside is pretty unfinished, and I'm not sure if I soldered the ring onto the top part very well. Either way, I like the look of it over all. More Photos: 1, 2

Resin

I've been experimenting with Easy Cast Clear Casting Epoxy lately. It's pretty popular among crafters and it seems like an excellent way to make cost effective, uniform pieces. Unfortunately, both of my first attempts at using this process have failed (I tried making a belt buckle today and I can tell already that it's not going to work out) but I'm starting to understand the nature of this stuff anyways. I'm hoping that once I get the hang of it I can also start trying to make my own molds. That should be fun and definitely a little more interesting than using the pre-made ones.