Apparently some people take off their earrings before taking a shower or going to bed. I’m not one of them (unless they have some parts that must not get wet or are huge ones for special occasions), so I tend to periodically ruin my cheaper earrings. The pair I was currently wearing is a cute fox where the stopper is actually the body of the fox so you have the whole animal dangling from your ears. Since I can’t go out and get new ones and also have some time I decided to restore them using UV resin.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Here you see the sad remains after about three months of constant wearing. From behind it looked like the red was some kind of shrink wrap with little adhesion to the metal. First I cleaned off the remaining paint. The paint around the eyes looks like it’s proper enamel, so I left it at that.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Next I coated the parts in several layers. One difficulty is the attachments of the tail, since resin would glue it to the body permanently. I worked carefully there with moderate success. Another thing is that resin leaves a lot of volume. The previous “shrink wrap” paint showed off the contours you can see above, but in the restored version they are gone. Foxy probably got a thicker winter coat. Also the colour is more brownish.
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Here’s the finished version. I quite like how they turned out. Kestrel would probably laugh at my clumsy painting skills, but I can live with that.
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©Giliell, all rights reserved
And here’s some bonus Pikachus. Because why not have a flock of them?
©Giliell, all rights reserved
OK no, I am not laughing -- those are cute earrings and totally worth saving and now they look great!
I think that’s a really interesting approach. Is this the type of UV resin that is used on fingernails? I got some of that and I like it. One thing with the type I have, when you finish, you have to wipe it with rubbing alcohol or it will be a little sticky for a while. The nice thing is you can use it over fingernail polish which comes in tons of colors so you have a nice choice of paint -- but this might be a different type than what I’ve got.
In any event well done, and good job not freezing the little tick-tock tails!
Those are super cute!
kestrel
I’m not completely sure. It should be the same in principle, but I buy it as crafting resin. The rubbing alcohol is a good tip, because especially white and black remain stubbornly sticky.
Nice work, and such cute earrings!
I keep small hoops in graduated sizes in my holes (3 and 2) to keep them from closing, and switch to nicer earrings for special occasions. Which I haven’t felt like doing in a long time, but that’s another story.
They are cute and I think the restoration looks well. But I cannot imagine sleeping with jewelry on my body. I mean, don’t they poke you in the side of the neck and head? And if not, how so? I am, of course, ignorant, since I do not wear any jewelry at all and never will.
Good job Giliell, I think the brownish red is a better match to a real fox than the original :-)
Charly I haven’t worn earings for years, but no unless they are large earings don’t poke you in the side of the neck or if they do I never noticed, as to how umm … they just don’t?
Charly
Yeah, no better way to explain it. They just don’t. Maybe there’s enough meat on an earlobe that isn’t very sensitive. I think most of it is what you’re used to. When that whole mess started a few weeks ago I took off the two rings I usually wear so I could wash my hands better and for about a week I felt naked.