Some time ago I watched a youtube video on making shaker charms with open bezels. Keyword is “a while ago”. It looked simple enough, so I decided to give it a try: you put your bezel onto some tape, add a layer of UV resin and harden that. Then you add your glitter, mix water with some glue, put it into the bezel, freeze it solid, add UV resin to the now solid top, harden, done.
So far, so good. Only that of course it didn’t work out like this, leading to these rather pitiful examples:
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
The unicorn one is the best of the batch, but still nowhere near acceptable. I figured out a couple of problems myself:
One: I’d overfilled the the bezels. I need to leave space inside for the resin to go. Two, working on three of them at the same time isn’t a good idea. Inevitably condensation happens on the other ones as you’re dealing with the first one. Three, my UV resin is too thick. It’s quite thick anyway and the cold from the frozen bezels makes it impossible to spread quickly and evenly.
While I figured out those three things. One thing remained a mystery: the surface of the ice. If this surface isn’t smooth, you’ll never get a clear resin layer. While I didn’t think the video in question was one of those fake craft videos, I kept wondering about it. Rewatching the video I saw that the person used distilled water, which I think will make quite a difference.
Next try: distilled water.
I’ll also add in another step: Once the water is frozen really, really solid, I’ll put another drop of water on top. It should hopefully create a super smooth surface and also create a barrier between the resin and any glitter that might have floated to the top. Wish me luck.
Oh that sounds like a finicky process. The result should be really neat, though, you can really see the potential here.
Finicky indeed, but a fun result when you get it right :-)
I’m not sure you need a really smooth surface?
Also, I think I’ve heard someplace that boiling water before freezing can help make clearer ice cubes, something about it driving out more of the dissolved gasses or something. Not sure if that would do anything for the surface smoothness though.
Anyways, thanks for posting, it’s interesting reading about how you do these various things.
@Iochaber: I was going to suggest this as well, which I learned from a rink manager explaining the Zamboni. It heats the water to 160ºF (71ºC) to remove the dissolved gasses. That’s one of the reasons ice rinks never have bubbles in the ice.