Lost Family necklace

Morning all,

Sharing a quick make with you this morning, I have been having a play with the lovely Diamond Resin, and made this pretty vintage necklace with the Lost Family papers, and a pretty bezel.  I love the Lost family, you can use images as focal points in your art or cards, or cut pieces out as I have, or distress them, or just frame them and pretend you have an amazing family history!

I cut out my image from the paper pad to fit the bezel.  The best way of doing this is either pushing the paper slightly into the bezel to make a mark round the edge, or if you put ink on your bezel front, then stamp onto acetate, and cut that out, you have a template to work from each time.

Coat the image in slap it on, on the front, sides and back, and let dry.  You can use the matte or the gloss for this step, the new gloss is very good.  Then glue into your bezel, you can use slap it on for this also.  Once in the bezel, coat all over the top again, I actually do that twice, drying in between, to make sure your image is sealed, as we want to retain the crispness of the image as it's a photo.  (Resin is beautiful poured onto old pages straight on, but with photo's it's best to protect them).

Take your Diamond Resin, and mix some of Part A and Part B equally according to instructions.  Stir for two minutes, don't worry about bubbles, they will dissipate as you pour and after.

Using the stick provided, take a little resin up on the stick, and drizzle into your bezel.  Don't overfill, but ease the resin to the edges of the bezel with the stick.  You can do one layer now, and more later if you want the piece to dome.  Leave for 6 to 8 hours or overnight to dry between layers.

A tip - I pour any left over resin either onto paper, (wearing gloves), and smooth out with a sponge, to give you fab resin book paper, or into molds, adding a tiny bit of paint or mica to colour it sometimes.  This way you don't waste any resin, always have more than one project on the go too.

Leave your stick in the bottom of the resin cup too, then when that's set hard, you know you can touch your pieces.  I cover them with a lid overnight with a tiny bit of airflow under, to keep them dust free.

When your resin is poured and set, you can make up your necklace as you wish.  I made a rosary chain to go on this one, with freshwater pearls and black spinel, making it a beautiful wearable piece.  I added a clasp as a charm at the bottom.  If you aren't a jewellery maker, just look round charity shops or car boots for jewellery or chains you can upcycle and change the pendant on.

If you haven't tried Diamond Resin yet, it's brilliant for lots of applicatons, you can use it in mixed media, to protect artwork and give a high shine finish, or in recesses on boxes, jewellery, card embellishments in molds, or resin paper that you can die cut, so many possiblilities!

It's nice to be with you again today, hope you have a good day.

Best Wishes,

Nikki K.