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- Hi! Welcome to Rekwizytornia.
- Today we will learn how to resin cast gemstones!
(Rekwizytornia Cosplay; Subject: Resin)
- Few words about resin:
- There are many types of this material: in this episode we will work with poliester resin which I use to cast little gemstones like this one.
- Of course besides casting gems we can make various things out of this material. For example: figures, Dolfs or parts of car body!
- In cosplay, besides making resin casts, we can also use resin to harden the EVA foam which we talked about in the last episode!
- In cosplay, besides making resin casts, we can also use resin to harden the EVA foam which we talked about in the last episode!
- 1st: I will teach you how to use plastic forms or how to make your own,
- 2nd: We will cast colourful gemstones,
- 3rd: I will give you some helpful tricks how to make the best visual effect of your casts.
- Basic materials which we will need to make the casts are:
- Resin with the hardener. We can buy it mostly in the hobby store and also on Allegro (eng - Ebay!) Price: around 50 zł/liter (€12; $16)
- Unfortunatelly poliester resin is transparent, this is why we need to use dyes to give it desired colour.
- In Poland the most common dye is wall paint pigment. Unfortunately it gives the mat effect.
- I am using diffrent dye, Mixol, which gives really neat transparent effect. If you are interested in this topic you can also buy some special hobbyist dyes from abroad (Ebay)
- This two dyes are easy to find (in Poland) and we can search for them in every DIY shop. Price max 10 zł (€3;$4) If we need more advanced dyes we have to look around in shops abroad.
- We have to cast resin in the molds. You can use premade ones but for the begginers i would like to suggest something simpler: for example ice cube trays!
- If you need to make a specific mold you can always use silicone.
- I am personally using casting silicone with hardener.
- You can also use sanitary silicone - it is cheaper but you need to remember about one thing.
- Before casting you should use some divider on the walls of mold: for example vaseline.
- Besides basic material we will also need:
- Some plastic container for silicone
- Special spray divider for your molds, bought in hobby shop (or vaseline)
- Plastic cups to cast resin and something to stir
- Aluminium foil to glue it on the bottom of the gem + glue
- (optionally) Colourful LED to light up the gemstone
- Scales for proportions check
- ...Let's start the work!
- But remember to not do it in your house. Time for teleportation to our MAGICAL SHED~!
- ....D:
- Ufff! Come in :D
- In case you are wondering: why are we here? Answer is simple.
- Unfortunatelly resin is quite toxic material. Work with it and the fumes it leaves while hardening is dangerous. You can get sick, feel dizzy.
- That's why i suggest to go out on the fresh air, maybe to a shed like this?
- Next thing is the safety gear. My suggestion: masks, some gloves... it will be fine :)
- To make your mold we will need:
- Jar (something to mix sylicone in), silicone with hardener and something to stir!
(Information about proportions to mix are on the container label)
- We have this simple shape from clay, we will put it in our little cup.
- Our mold is ready! At this moment i fix last details: remove the little bubbles, scrub the silicone from walls.
- Now we have to wait a bit, few hours. It would be right to check on our mold once in a while. We will see later :)
- As i mentioned, our mold will be hardening a few hours, that is why i will show you one of my old, ready ones.
- That's how it looks.
- We can always take it out of the plastic box. It is elastic, ready to cast. We can start 2nd phase, the resin.
- We need: Resin with the label and hardener.
- Divider, molds, scales, dye and something to stir, together with cups.
- After reading the description from label on the container I am starting to scale the proportions to make my resin harden.
- Each type of resin we will use have diffrent proportions to scale and mix wth hardener. That is why I don't give you exact amont of mine in this cup. (follow the description kids! ;))
- The more you will use the resin, the easier it will be for you to make right proportion of your mixture. I use to mix it without even checking now. :)
- When we have right mix proportions it is time to use the dye.
- You need to know that the dyes are really efficient that is why only one drop (or even less!) will be fine for your colour.
- Add it up to your needs and stir!
- Our gemstones got hard enough for me to put some LEDs.
- When our gemstones are hard enough to take them out of the mold they will look like this.
- I hope you know that noone makes perfect at the first time, that is why don't worry if you fail :)
I would love to show you some of my failures: bubbles on the surface, here i glued the aluminium wrong way and i couldn't get it off the gem.
- Here it was too delicate and broke in half, this is result of fail with silicone mold.
- One of the last thing we can do with gemstone is to glue some aluminium foil on the bottom. The light will reflect in the inside and give the stone the depth.
- We will need aluminium foil, scizzors, cyanoacrylate glue.
- This s how our gemstone is going to look after all work :)
- It will be all for today! I hope the tutorial will help you, I wish you good luck :)
- About making the gems: remember, it is really important to be patient and have the intution, noone makes it perfect at first try! :)