tips from Silvers store consultants

Acces­sories can work won­ders and give even the sim­plest clothes and hair­style an orig­i­nal char­ac­ter. How­ev­er, the prod­ucts that are sold in most stores are most often made in thou­sands of copies on a large scale. But you real­ly want to wear your own unique jew­el­ry — those that you can make your­self from epoxy resin. They have a spe­cial val­ue — their his­to­ry, which makes them orig­i­nal and desir­able. This piece of jew­el­ry would make a great gift. Hand­made things, in which the cre­ator puts his soul, are always appre­ci­at­ed the most. Learn how to make epoxy resin jew­el­ry in this arti­cle.

Epoxy resin: how to work

Epoxy resin is a syn­thet­ic mate­r­i­al con­sist­ing of one or two com­po­nents. The kit includes: resin and hard­en­er in liq­uid form. After mix­ing them, the mass turns into plas­tic for the for­ma­tion of var­i­ous prod­ucts. After hard­en­ing and paint­ing, it becomes resis­tant to scratch­es and dam­age.

How to make epoxy resin products

This mate­r­i­al allows you to cre­ate design­er jew­el­ry in the form of cast­ings with embed­ded ele­ments:

• petals,

• flower buds,

• dried leaves,

• grains,

• berries,

• pho­tos,

• insects

• sequins,

• wood­en and met­al parts made in 3D tech­nol­o­gy.

Col­or­less epoxy resin can be giv­en dif­fer­ent shades using dyes and pig­ments of var­i­ous tex­tures. The most pop­u­lar shades are gold, red, blue, green and black. You can use loose, liq­uid and flu­o­res­cent pow­ders that glow at night, rhine­stones of all col­ors and sizes, all kinds of small orna­ments, small mois­ture-resis­tant stick­ers, dried flow­ers, var­i­ous pearls, potal, shells, peb­bles, feath­ers, etc.

What do you need to work with epoxy resin?

The main advan­tages of this tech­nol­o­gy:

• the abil­i­ty to cre­ate with­out the use of com­plex machines, devices and tools;

• the free­dom to cre­ate shapes and the ease of com­bin­ing dif­fer­ent ele­ments.

Epoxy resin for begin­ners is a fair­ly com­plex mate­r­i­al. At first, begin­ners make mis­takes and are often dis­ap­point­ed. Work­ing with resin requires a lot of time, care and patience. The main reward for fans of unusu­al, per­son­al­ized and extra­or­di­nary hand­made jew­el­ry is a good result and the emer­gence of the skill to make orig­i­nal acces­sories and gifts that will stay with you for­ev­er.

In addi­tion to resin, dyes, dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments and acces­sories, you need to take care of safe­ty and pre­pare:

• pro­tec­tive gloves (latex, vinyl or nitrile);

• pro­tec­tive face mask. Although the epoxy itself does not smell, the hard­en­er does give off a sub­tle smell of ammo­nia. Its vapors can cause irri­ta­tion and aller­gies;

• pro­tec­tive glass­es. When pour­ing resin with a syringe, there is a risk of splash­ing it in dif­fer­ent direc­tions;

• splash-proof cloth­ing such as an apron or gown.

To mix dyes you will need:

• dif­fer­ent con­tain­ers;

• plas­tic cups for mea­sur­ing pro­por­tions;

• sticks for mix­ing (wood­en sticks for ice cream or cof­fee stir­ring are suit­able);

• tooth­picks that help in cre­at­ing com­po­si­tions from embed­ded ele­ments and remov­ing air bub­bles;

• paper tow­els;

• pro­tec­tive film or paper for the table.

It would be use­ful to have a small sep­a­rate source of fire — a gas lighter or burn­er, with which it is con­ve­nient to get rid of unnec­es­sary air bub­bles.

It is also nec­es­sary to take care of suf­fi­cient ven­ti­la­tion of the room and main­tain the tem­per­a­ture at least 20 ° C. After all, the low­er the tem­per­a­ture, the longer the cur­ing time of the resin. At 25°C the par­tial cure time is 16 hours. This means that the resin, depend­ing on the thick­ness of the lay­er, may be ready to be demold­ed, how­ev­er, it must wait 7 days for it to ful­ly cure, so that it is ready for fur­ther pro­cess­ing — grind­ing, pol­ish­ing or drilling.

Epoxy resin products: where to start?

To start exper­i­ment­ing with epoxy, sil­i­cone molds are ide­al for mak­ing cast­ings. They are easy to use, reusable, easy to clean and give you com­plete con­trol over the end result. Sil­i­cone molds are made in var­i­ous sizes, with and with­out holes, with dif­fer­ent tex­tures, in the form of blanks for rings, bracelets, pen­dants, beads, cabo­chons or geo­met­ric shapes. Aer­o­bat­ics is the abil­i­ty to use open­work forms in the form of ani­mals, plants, snowflakes.

How are epoxy resin decorations made?

Due to its unique prop­er­ties, epoxy resin is used to cre­ate semi-fin­ished prod­ucts for jew­el­ry such as beads, rings, bracelets, as well as entire sets, includ­ing ear­rings, neck­laces and pen­dants.

• Rings up to 17 mm in diam­e­ter are filled with col­or­less resin or mixed with dyes and pig­ments. If the form is filled to the brim, after it has com­plete­ly hard­ened, after a week, you need to cut off the excess resin with a file, sand­pa­per or grinder, and then pol­ish the sur­face.

• Bracelets with a diam­e­ter of about 78 mm, an inner hole of up to 62 mm and a height of up to 10 mm are made accord­ing to the same rules as rings. The only dif­fer­ence is mix­ing more resin.

• Pen­dants and ear­rings allow you to exper­i­ment with pour­ing shapes and embed­ding var­i­ous ele­ments into them — hooks or pen­dants.

• Mul­ti-col­ored beads are made from a mass of resin, embed­ding var­i­ous dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments into them.

There are many arti­cles and video tuto­ri­als on the Inter­net that show in detail the process of mak­ing jew­el­ry from A to Z with var­i­ous nuances. But if you think that you won’t suc­ceed — you don’t have the appro­pri­ate skills, tal­ent, time and patience, you can always buy ready-made high-qual­i­ty prod­ucts in the Sil­vers online store. Check out the cat­a­log and choose the jew­el­ry that suits the style, mate­r­i­al and col­or and order their deliv­ery in Ukraine.