Friday, April 19, 2013

What to Do When You Don't Mix Enough Resin - 3 Great Tips to Fix it!

Sometimes when you're mixing resin, you underestimate how much resin you need and don't measure out quite enough resin to fill your mould. Disaster! Right?

Well, you can make sure that this never happens to you. This video shows you one method to work out the volume of your mould.


Another way to work out how much resin to mix is to fill your mould with rice or water and then tip that into a measuring cup/jug.


But what if you didn't work out how much resin you need before you started and now you've discovered you don't have enough to fill your mould?

Here are 3 ideas to try!

1. Top the mould up

Mix more resin and try to match the colour

It's really hard to get an exact colour match... but you might get close enough that no one will really notice the colour difference. 
Chunky pink carved bangle that has been topped up with a slightly lighter pink resin to fill the mould

You can barely see the difference in this bangle - it looks like shadow and highlight - and it would be barely noticeable when this bangle was being worn.

2. Use the colour-blocking technique

Top the mould up with a couple of contrasting colours of resin so it looks like you meant it!

green and white colour blocked ripple vase sitting on a terracotta platter
 
Colour-blocking works really well in moulds with a bit of height, like a jar with a lid, bangle moulds, planter pots, vases and this cuff mould. 
Striped resin cuff in cream, pink and berry

The tricky part is to not drip each colour on the walls of the mould so you have clean edges between each colour and don't end up with spots of one colour in the middle of the next.

Bonus tip! Here's a great way to use up extra resin that you mixed too. Just keep topping up your mould with whatever resin you have left from each project and you'll get a multicoloured piece like this striped ring.
Striped resin ring made from resin leftovers

3. Half-fill the Mould

With some moulds, you don't always have to fill the mould to the top. With basic-shaped moulds that have simple lines and no surface design (like the cuff below), you can get away with underfilling the mould!

Here's a bangle cast from one of my cuff moulds. It measures 33mm across the widest part of the bangle.
Mandarine orange resin cuff

Here's the same bangle, cast in the same mould, made by only half-filling the mould.
Half-width resin cuff bracelet in marbled mint

It measures just 19mm across the widest part!

See how different they look when they're alongside each other. 

Looks totally different, doesn't it!
Narrow mint resin cuff and wide orange cuff alongside each other

Partially filling the mould makes this mould much more versatile!

So it's not always a disaster when you don't have enough resin to fill the mould. You just need to think creatively to top them up or trim them so that it looks like it was deliberate.

Pin this Tip!
3 Ideas to try if you haven't mixed enough resin inspiration sheet


Happy Resining!

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