Hi there.
Sandy here.
Welcome to another jewelry making video at
my YouTube channel and my blog, KeepsakeCrafts.net.
Today I'm going to show you how you can take
some natural materials such as flowers and
bits of growing things that you find outside
and make yourself this really pretty pendant.
So here are a few things that I found out
in my yard that would be appropriate for making
these pendants.
You have to look for truly tiny little flowers.
Lavender actually gives some of the best results.
These are little flowers from thyme, buttercups.
These smaller yellow flowers are blossoms
from my kale.
This is, I'm not sure what this is.
It's a weed and it's got these pretty little
purple flowers or you can even just use grass.
This is just the top part of the grass and
you only need little tiny bits.
You'll also need some UV Resin.
Magic-Glos is one of the more popular brands.
It cures under a UV light or just in direct
sunlight, which if it's available is free.
And the other thing you'll need is a mold.
A silicone mold or a mold made for resin would
be just right.
So we're going to do this in stages and the
first stage, after making sure that your molds
are perfectly clean, is to put a very, very
thin layer of Magic-Glos in there.
So just put a few drops.
Although it's expensive, this 6 oz. bottle
is definitely economical if you're going to
be making a lot of these.
This would be a wonderful project to make
as memory jewelry.
You could use flowers from a special occasion
or a certain event and preserve them in resin.
So I'm just tilting my mold so that the entire
bottom is covered and then the next step is
to put this out in the sunshine for 10-15
minutes and it will be nice and hard, just
like these.
I filled just the bottom earlier, if you can
see that.
As thin a layer as I could and you can see
it's all cured and now what you need to do
is get yourself a little disposable cup and
again make sure it's clean and then pour some
of your resin in there.
Once you have your resin in this, set it aside
for a moment and then decide what you want
to put into your piece.
You may have to snip off bits and you just
want to plan your composition.
Don't over crowd.
A few nice pieces is better than a whole bunch
piled in there.
Grasses are nice because they just add a little
bit of texture and actually a pendant made
with just those is really quite pretty.
You also don't want any of your greenery sticking
out above the level.
These buttercups that I did, I had to put
an extra layer of resin on -and now it's not
smooth- to try to cover up the parts that
were sticking out here.
So for something like the buttercups or the
deeper flowers which has some depth to it,
you'll need to make sure that you have a deeper
mold.
So once those are all in there, you're going
to pull them out again and then grab a pair
of tweezers and you'll be working from front
to back.
So whatever is going in the front goes on
first and then you're just going to dip them
in that resin that you poured into the cup.
If you don't do this step, what happens is
that pockets of air are trapped in your plants
and you end up with air bubbles.
One nice thing about the resin is that it
isn't a matter of time for curing.
It's a matter of putting it in direct sunlight.
So what you can do also to help prevent air
bubbles is to let it sit for awhile and let
all those bubbles rise to the surface, pop
them with a pin if you need to.
See things like this that have all those little
nooks and crannies, they will trap the air
bubbles and it's not a real attractive look.
I'll show you some examples of my first ones
that I did without dipping.
So now I would suggest letting this sit in
the mold and if you're in a very dusty place,
then just go ahead and put, tent something
over it to keep dust or cat hair from landing
on it.
Let it sit for 10-15 minutes and then once
it's done that, then put it out in the sun.
Now here's one I've done to that stage earlier.
Now if you look at this one, I don't know
if you can tell, I don't want to tip this
too much, but those little bits of greenery
are sticking above the back of the mold so
I'm just going to pull those off and then
you can use the resin that's in your cup.
Try not to over fill these and I'll show you
why.
You really want to keep it below that lip.
So I'm going to set this aside for about 15
minutes and then I'll put it out in the sun.
In the meantime, here are some examples of
ones I did earlier.
You can see bit honkin' bubbles that came
up.
It would have been really pretty.
This is one that was not dipped and you can
see all the air that was trapped around those
flowers.
It really takes away from the beauty of it.
This one was really cute.
These are chive blossoms and they didn't trap
too much air, but still the air bubbles aren't
really attractive.
This is just grass like this and it's rather
pretty.
This would be pretty with baby's breath that
was from a special bouquet.
Interestingly, these pretty little purple
flowers totally lose their purple color in
the resin.
It must be some sort of chemical reaction
because this is what they were going into
the resin and that's what it's like cured.
So some things may not work as well as others.
Here's one with the lavender and I've dipped
the lavender, but I still didn't let it sit
long enough before adding the final layer
of resin.
So here are these pieces back in from the
sunshine.
Let me un-mold these two.
This is the one that's still not done so I'm
going to leave that in there, but the way
you un-mold these is just the way you get
ice cubes out of a tray, you just kind of
twist it.
And that one came out pretty nice.
It actually has a big bubble up here.
That must have happened when I first did it.
And again just twist and that one came out
rather nice, but you may see the problem with
this one is because I over filled the mold,
I have this lip here.
Now you can take a nice sharp craft knife
and very carefully go along and carve that
down, but it's a pain in the neck.
It's tough to get it nice and smooth.
You need to go very slowly so that you don't
make gouges.
Just removing little tiny bits at a time and
it's one of those things that requires patience.
So what I prefer to do is make sure that I
don't over fill the mold so that I can save
myself some work.
And then when you're done with these, you
can make them into whatever kind of jewelry
you like.
What I recommend is glue on bails.
Now there's a couple ways that you can string
these to make them into pendants.
One thing you can do, I don't love the look,
but you can do it, is to drill a hole.
You can see this one has a hole drilled right
here.
It's not as easy as drilling polymer clay,
but you can do it by hand.
You just want to make sure that you always
start with an awl and make a dent wherever
you want your hole to be and that will keep
your drill bit from slipping.
Now you can clean off all of your tools that
you used the resin with, the cup, the mixers,
the tweezers, anything that had uncured resin
on it as long as you don't put it out in the
sun.
Just wipe it off and then use a baby wipe
or an alcohol wipe to clean off the rest.
And that's how you can make yourself some
really nice memory jewelry or just some special
nature jewelry.
So if you're interested in the supplies I
used in this project, there's a link in the
upper right to go to my accompanying blog
post.
If you're new here and haven't already subscribed
to my YouTube channel, make sure you do for
three new video tutorials every week.
I upload every Monday, Wednesday and Friday
and if you'd like to support my channel, check
out my Patreon link.
Happy creating.
Thanks for watching.
Bye bye.