Resin Casting Success and Miniature Candy Rings

This morning, I popped more of my resin casting experiments out of their little molds, and hallelujah–they look good! (Just joining us? You can see my earlier attempts, including a few duds in this post and this one.)

The three pieces that I was waiting on were a bottle of Oronamin C, a bottle of Lucozade, and a Deep ‘n Delicious cake in its packaging, all of which will soon be turned into rings. Here’s what I’m trying to recreate:

A little resin troubleshooting

For starters, I’ve been having trouble with the resin mixture of the Oronamin C. I had a feeling that part of the problem was incompatibility between the mold material and the resin (EasyCast), but I also thought the colorant (by Castin’ Craft) might have had something to do with the tacky, uncured resin. Since I’d already spent ages making the mold, I decided to tinker with the colorant first, and voilà–that made a huge difference!

Here’s what I determined: For whatever reason, the liquid resin colorant (when used above a certain amount, even though it was well below the threshold recommended on the package) was preventing the resin from curing properly, so I decided to use only two drops of liquid colorant and make up the rest with grated artist chalk pastel. It worked.

Also, I noticed that any resin in contact with the mold (made from a pourable rubber material by Smooth-On) had a slightly tacky feel, yet the rest of the piece was cured to a rock hard finish. So I tried cleaning the outside of the resin piece with gentle soap and water, and that removed all of the tackiness. The surface underneath was perfectly cured and incredibly hard. Finally!

Using water slide decal paper

To complete the Lucozade bottle, I made a clear bottle label using water slide decal paper, but for this particular project it turned out that I needed to print the label on regular white paper instead. The decal paper is great for many projects, but here, the logo just wasn’t visible enough against the orange bottle, and the regular paper label looked much better.

Using resin and polymer clay together

Finally, I had to figure out a way to miniaturize the package of cake. The main issue was that the plastic top couldn’t be flimsy, since the finished piece is going to be worn as a ring, so the top essentially had to be solid, clear resin. I started by sculpting a clay version of the lid, which I then used to cast a mold. Then, I sculpted the cake package base out of clay coated in gold pigment, and I created a layer of cake frosting to set on top. This entire clay piece was baked.

Next, I poured clear resin into my lid mold, and I carefully set the clay piece on top of the resin. My hope was that, once the resin had cured, it would have covered the cake and formed a solid lid. The process worked, although the clay piece turned out to be positioned slightly askance, so I’ll have to cast it again, but at least I know the technique is solid. To finish, the cake package label will be glued on top and everything will be sealed with UV- and water-resistant coating.