Hello!
Tracy here with another
Amazing Casting Products tutorial! Sometimes inspiration finds me at the strangest times, in this case I was standing in a pharmacy looking at nail art stickers. With such a wide ranges of subjects and themes, nail art stickers are tiny works of art that I felt could be made into stylish elements that don't need to be on nails only!
Supplies:
- Amazing Clear Cast Resin
- Black Alumilite Dye
- Amazing Remelt
- Nail Art Stickers (found anywhere that sells nail polish)
- Toothpicks
- Stir Sticks
- Tweezers
- Small metal frames (easily found at your local craft store in the jewelry or scrapbooking isle)
- Needle nose pliers, Wire-cutters
- Beads
- Earring wires, jump-rings and chain
I bought several sets of nail art stickers, picking flower, butterfly, swirl and sparkle patterns. I wanted to have ones that had a lot of detail and good colors, that once coated in resin would look the best.
In my dragon hoard of jewelry supplies, I have a lot of odd shaped frames that are often very small and/or have shallow basins, often just not right for most jewelry projects. However many of these little pieces were the perfect size to frame nail art stickers!
With these pieces being so small and delicate I needed to place them on a small platform to keep them in place and level for resin application. This is where
Amazing Remelt came to the rescue! I pulled a block of
Amazing Remelt out of its container and placed all of the frames on top of the Remelt. With Remelt being naturally a bit sticky the pieces were held perfectly in place. The earring wires were easy to push into the Remelt and any resin drips could easily pealed off once cured. Once I was done with my project I could reuse the Remelt for any future non-food related projects.
I mixed up a small portion of
Amazing Clear Cast Resin, making sure to slowly stir to reduce air bubbles and let it sit for 5 minutes. Using toothpicks, I put a tiny drop of Black
Alumilite Dye into a small mixing cup. I applied a very thin coat of the tinted resin to the bottom of each frame. The addition of black tinted resin acts as a canvas for the nail art stickers, helping them become more visible. I let this layer cure about 5 hours.
I carefully peeled off the nail art stickers from their plastic backing and placed them into the thin black resin coatings with tweezers. I found burnishing the stickers a little with tweezers or a small stylus made sure the stickers were firmly in place with no trapped air bubbles. With nail art stickers originally intended for use in nail polish they do not need to be sealed before moving onto the next step.
I mixed up another small portion of
Amazing Clear Cast Resin, this time leaving it clear and applied it to the frames with a toothpick. By using a toothpick I was able to control the amount of resin flowing into the frames and to make sure I added just enough resin to create a dome, which naturally magnifies the nail art stickers. I let this resin layer cure completely.
With the addition of some jewelry wire, beads and findings I made a complete collection of lovely little detailed jewelry. With other frames and stickers any number of fashion styles can be created!
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