Tuft's Police

Well, it feels like it’s been forever since my last post, and I think the time has definitely come for another; I miss writing about crafts!! It’s been pretty busy lately, but now I have lots of crafts to talk about!

I had a hard time deciding which thing I should talk about first, but I’m gonna go with the sea glass mosaics on canvas again.  As I think I mentioned before, I wanted to coat my pictures in resin to give them a little shine and help protect them from the elements (and keep any glass pieces from being able to fall off).

So I bought some polyester resin and attempted it on my first pictures the other day.  The pictures were smaller than some of the other ones I’ve made, about 4 by 5 inches, so I didn’t need very much resin at all- about two tablespoons each.  So I followed the directions and mixed up the resin with the catalyst and poured it on the pictures (which were elevated using empty Gatorade bottles).  I was so impressed with the way they turned out!

But, I had no idea the resin would smell so bad.  I had the windows open and the fan on, but the room still smelled pretty terrible.  After awhile it didn’t seem so bad, and I was doing some pretty intense multitasking (reading/crocheting/watching a show) when the cop and David’s RA came in.  They informed me that the smell was bad all down the hall (whoops) and the RA had called tufts police because he thought I was burning something (which still doesn’t really make sense to me, because it smelled a lot like spray paint). 

I was complemented on my work by the cop, who thought the sea glass picture idea was really cool, but then informed that it would be best to do this outside next time.  Oh well, now I know! And to anyone out there thinking of experimenting with resin for paintings or jewelry, find a nice open space!!

On another note, I have some exciting news about the rock tumbler! I had to break down and buy grit, but finally I got some results. It took a little patience, leaving it in for almost a week, but the glass came out smooth around the edges and frosty white.  I found a couple of blue beer bottles in the bushes the other day, so I’m very excited to see how the next batch of glass does in the tumbler :)

If you have any questions about projects that you’re working on now, feel free to ask me below and I’ll see if I can help!