Learning from Craftastrophes!

Last fall I really wanted to get back into making jewellery and wanted to do it as DIY as possible. So I tried salt sough and added some vervain, inspired by its protective abilities and the show Vampire Diaries, LOL.

Salt dough ends up shrinking too much even if you bake if for a while, stays really rough and just did not feel right in my hands. I did not like working with it and let it go.



I really wanted to play with foodie elements and combine them using Diamond Glaze but even though I varnished the candy sprinkles with hairspray, the glaze still started to dissolve everything. This is what stopped me years ago. It also did not help make my Vincent Price pendant get all shiny. It got kind of gooey.

It was at this moment I realized it was time to invest in Ice Resin, the real deal resin that is super pro and expensive.



Back to clay... Then I tried to make air hardening cold porcelain. Which did make great pendants but...???!!! The fumes from the glue (not to mention touching glue) bothered me a great deal. So I tried making my own homemade glue.



Which did thicken but it clumped all to hell! What did I do? I sieved it and hoped for the best.



I tried making the porcelain clay with it but it got so liquidy, it was unusable. That's it! I was done!



I asked Reg to take me to the dollar store and bought two bricks of air hardening clay. The real deal that has already been pressed and is good to go. All natural and according to the package, gluten free! Which made me laugh my ass off.



There we go. Back to what I originally used when I first started making my amulets and pendants all those years ago in BC. Much better and still economical.

One More Disaster



Again, to be a cheapskate I tried making "resin-like" pendants using my molds and a hot glue gun. I thought I was really onto to something at first.



Until I tried to get them out of the "bleeping" molds! One split into three layers, one wasn't too bad but the one with the heart (that OK, turned out to look cool) was sheer and absolute hell to get out of the mold. I mean it, I was swearing like a sailor and had no luck and this was a brand new mold I had invested it. I found a video that said you can dissolve glue using alcohol to get it to separate hot glue from any surface so I doused it with it.

If this did not work I was just going to set the damn thing on fire, I was that pissed! Slowly but surely I plucked it out using a spatula with my fingers screaming at me for being such a stupid idiot.

OK, so that is it! No more being a cheap ass. It is time to get out the Ice Resin and stop fighting with the process. And get back to my clay roots and really do some sculpting.

Sometimes it pays to be a DIY Goddess but most of the time? For Goddess and sanity's sake, when it comes to crafting invest in the real tools and products. This is supposed to be fun, not HELL!