UV Resin

This post is dedicated to Sharon!

More than a few people have struggled with resin. I myself am an Envirotex Lite girl.

Love it, can control it, know exactly how to make it do what I want.

But. When you say resin, I tend to tune in to see what else there might be on the market.

I decided to do a little experiment with Magic Glos. Magic Glos comes premixed. All it needs in the sun to dry. No sun, no UV, no hardening. It will stay liquid forever.

Unless you have a UV lamp, in which case feel free to work anytime of the day indoors.

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Last week I used these gals on a necklace I made. Since the images were handy, I popped them into some bezels.

Then, I poured in the resin. LOOK HOW EASY this is. The bottle dropper makes this so simple. Also, no messy mixing accidents. There were a few bubbles, but I am used to that, so I let the resin settle before I moved the bezels into the window to cure.

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Free art equipment. A sunny window.

Unfortunately, as soon as I moved the bezels into the window, the sun disappeared and it was overcast all day. I checked in on the bezels several times and four or five hours later the top layer was relatively hard, but clearly, they were still in a gel like form. If it had been sunny, they would have been harder.

I do have a UV lamp....no surprise. So I popped them under the lamp for 20 minutes and they were done. If you want to know what a UV lamp set up looks like I really like this kit from Rings and Things. I think I will set them out for another 24 hour to give the resin a really good chance to get hard. I plan to use the UV resin again this summer. On one of those super hot, super sunny July afternoons when I know it will harden outdoors in 15-20 minutes.

For even more detailed information, these is a super video tutorial on John Golden's blog.