All About Resin Crafts: Projects, Ideas, Pictures and Suggestions for Where to Buy Resin Crafts Supplies
Use Resin for Jewelry Making, Collage Art, Mixed Media Art, Mosaic Art, Sculpture, Painting, Stained Glass Style Art, Wood Carving and a Broad Range of Other Creative Purposes.
Wondering what crafts you can make with resin? This is the place to learn all about resin crafts.
Resin is a useful, versatile craft material that has many possible uses. I first started working with resin because I wanted to use it for creating mosaic tiles to use in my original art collage pieces. I took all the pictures you see on this page at the time I was using resin for that purpose. When you look at the collage pieces, check out the area directly above the square collaged part to see the resin.
You can also use resin to make jewelry and other objects. In particular, resin makes lovely pendants, beads, charms and cabochons for jewelry. You can also make things like keychains, brooches and bangle bracelets out of resin.
Resin also lends itself well to art forms such as painting and sculpture. You can paint with resin, sculpt with it or use it as a stained glass substitute. There are talented artists combining resin with wood carvings and wood sculptures too.
About Resin
Resin is interesting because it starts out as a moldable gelatinous substance; the fluid nature of the resin allows you to easily create shapes out of it and embed other objects into it. Then after you mix it with its recommended hardener, it later hardens into a rigid, clear plastic. Often, the other objects you use along with it become the focal point of the project; the resin itself isn’t so remarkable, but it is so fantastic because it lends itself to such a wonderful variety of embedded objects, shapes and uses.
There are multiple types of resin available. They each offer varying degrees of hardness, so it’s important to be aware of which type is best suited to the project you’re planning to do. Most resins require that you mix them with a chemical hardener so that they solidify. Before solidification is complete, you pour the mixture of resin plus hardener into a silicon mold or you use some other means of shaping it. The mixture will usually cure and harden after a period of time has elapsed – perhaps around 24 hours, but this may vary.
Resin Crafts: Supplies You Need for Getting Started
The exact supplies you’ll need depend on the project you want to make. Usually, you’ll need a resin kit that includes the resin plus the chemical hardener. You’ll also need a flexible mold such as a silicon mold or some other flexible surface to use for shaping the resin as it cures. I recommend a flexible mold because it is somewhere between extremely challenging and impossible to remove hardened resin from a hard mold such as an ice cube tray.
I recommend Dick Blick as being one of the best sources for resin craft supplies including epoxy resin, molds and more. I’m a longtime Dick Blick customer, and I have been extremely pleased with their prompt service.
If you plan to make jewelry, it’s beneficial to get one or more molds that are specifically intended for casting small pieces that will work well with ordinary jewelry findings. For example, these Castin Craft jewelry molds look like they’d be exactly what you need for this purpose (I haven’t personally tried using these, but they are on my “wish list” of top-priority craft supplies to try.)
Ideas for Items to Embed in Your Resin
You’ll also probably want some small items to embed in your resin. In my own resin craft projects, I’ve used things like small beads, silk flowers, pennies, mosaic tiles and bits of broken plates to embed in my resin. In one mixed media collage art piece, I used little worry dolls that had been barrette decorations. My barrettes broke, so I rescued the worry dolls and repurposed them. If you have broken jewelry, this could possibly be a great way to salvage some of the interesting bits from that. There are many creative possibilities.
So there you have it: Those are some of the most important basics you need to know about resin crafts. I hope you found this information helpful and inspiring. Happy crafting!
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By Amy Solovay
This page was last updated on 9-12-2024