How to Make UV Resin Look Like Dichroic Glass or Brilliant Opal

Attach a playful penguin to your key fob and turn it into a FUNKEE keychain. This anodized penguin has a belly filled with iridescent flashes of brilliant colour giving it the look of dichroic glass or a dazzling opal. But you don't need glassmaking or lapidary skills for this project... You can easily create this dichroic glass look with UV resin and iridescent mylar flakes .  And it will only take you around an hour!  I've used an ultra-fast curing UV resin in this project. But you can use regular UV resin and still get the same results. The benefit of using this faster curing resin are that it has a lot less odour than regular UV resins, it cures FASTER and it only needs a low-wattage lamp (like a UV torch or mini UV lamp) to cure it.  Project Shopping List: Penguin (or other animal) anodized bottle opener/keychain (this one is similar) . Tip: If you wish to use the key chain as a bottle opener, choose one where the bottle lever is separate to the bo......

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How to Clean Resin Tools

Every hobby requires you to outlay some money, whether it's for tools or consumables.  In resin crafting, you can't avoid spending money on consumable items like resin, colourants and moulds. They are the things that you will keep replenishing as you run out.  But there are items you can SAVE MONEY on; things like mixing/measuring cups and stir sticks. When you first start out on your resin adventure, most beginners use disposable plastic cups (or Dixie cups) and wooden stir sticks. They're inexpensive, convenient and very easy to find. But after a while, you start to see how many of these items you are throwing away and start thinking, there has to be a better way. And there is! You can replace disposable cups and stir sticks with reusable cups and stirrers made of polypropylene (PP).  Why polypropylene?  Because resin doesn't stick to it and it's sturdy so it can be reused. You can tell if a cup is polypropylene by the recycling symbol on the bottom of......

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How to Mix Resin Without Bubbles

One of the biggest challenges when working with resin is bubbles. Even experts have trouble with bubbles. There are plenty of ways to deal with them if you have any in your project. If you're looking for tips on how to do that, here's a post that shows you  7 Ways to Eliminate Bubbles From Your Resin . But what about eliminating them right from the outset? Is it possible to mix resin WITHOUT incorporating bubbles into the mix? One surefire way to minimise bubbles is to mix the resin slowly . But even still, no matter how slowly you mix it, you're likely to end up with some bubbles. But THERE IS A BETTER WAY! Ditch the wooden stir stick! Yes, that's right... ditch it!  You might know them as craft sticks, coffee stirrers, pop sticks or tongue depressors.  It doesn't matter what name they go by; these stir sticks are a  major cause of bubbles  being introduced to the resin during mixing. So instead of using a wooden stir stick to mix your res......

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