Using UV Resin A beginners Guide - Top 5 tips

hi i'm paula storm my kids often accuse me of having a new crafty obsession every week and they might have a point but my obsession that i'm going to tell you about today has been hanging around for a good couple of years now i wanted to talk to you about uv resin and my top five tips to help you succeed with uv resin let's go craft up a storm [Music] resin is a fantastic product and it's been around for years but most people know resin as a type of product that you need to mix together so you have a part a and a part b you mix those parts together and then you need to wait for anywhere from 45 minutes up to a day two days three days for it to cure the difference with uv resin is that you can pour it straight from the bottle into a mold and have a cured finished product within about 60 seconds so uv resin has that instant gratification that i absolutely love but it's creative too you can mix all different types of things into your resin you can use different pigment pigments to change the colors or you can insert things like dried flowers or even fabric into your resin to create really personalized products for you so today i thought i would show you just a few of the basics and run over the usual problems that people face with uv resin so i'm going to grab out a mold so as where most of you watching my channel are quilters i thought or sewers i thought i'd make a button using a simple button mould so all i need to make a clear button is a mold some uv resin and a uv light so this uv light is basically just what they use for acrylic nails or for gel nails rather so these are pretty easy to come across these days but you don't actually need a light to make uv resin products you can just pop this outside and let the uv rays from the sun cure your resin for you so basically let's make just a super simple button by pouring our clear uv resin straight into the mold so i'm going to use this medium size button here and all i'm doing is filling up that mold with some resin now what i like to do just before i cure my piece is to take a toothpick and just run that toothpick through the center of my button just to make sure that the resin gets inside those areas i also like to run my toothpick around the outside of the piece to make sure any trapped air doesn't create bubbles because bubbles can be really frustrating when it comes to resin so then i just use a baby wipe to clean off my toothpick so i can keep using it now one last thing i want to do before i pop this under the light is grab out just my little i call it a flamethrower but this is just a bbq lighter and i'm just going to run that over the top of my piece if i can get it to light i'm just going to run it over the top of my piece and what that does is it draws up any leftover bubbles or air that's trapped in there and it bursts those bubbles for you so really super easy so now all i need to do is pop on my uv light so i just turn it on with the button and this light will actually stay on for 60 seconds which is really what you need to start with to cure your piece depending on the size you may need to cure it for a bit longer but basically 60 seconds is usually enough so now i can just move my lighter away and i like to just touch my button and just if it feels a little bit tacky then i would pop it back under the light um but if it's not tacky it's ready to come out of the mold so then all i need to do is just pop that out and i have a beautiful finished button isn't that the cutest so resin when it's curing it does heat up quite a bit so you do want to be careful not to touch it too soon but there it is that's our finished little button so that's just the start it is so easy to work with resin and to play with it and to come up with the most amazing designs so one of the ways i find most fun to play with my uv resin is by using pigments so i've got these pigments here that are all um solid opaque colors so i've got all the primary colors so we've got the blue red and yellow and also black and white now the white is a a little bit more transparent but it's it's pretty much opaque but it does have an opal sort of effect or a shimmer to it so by adding the white to any of my other pigments i can give it that real shimmer it makes the piece look so beautiful but basically let's make another button all i'm going to do is pour in a little bit of resin into my little cup here and you really only need a small amount so i'm thinking about um yeah about that much i hope you can see basically that's in australia that would be classed as about a 10 cent piece i think that's about a quarter um in the us so that's all you need to make a button so then i might put in a drop of pigment so let's make a blue button all you need is one tiny tiny little drop there we go it's like food coloring you don't need a lot to get a full solid pigment so what i'm going to do is just grab one of my little mixing tools here you could do this with a toothpick but i find it quicker to just use one of these little plastic tools and give it a mix so that one drop of pigment is enough to cover that entire um amount of resin it's really simple so if you have a look that's quite a nice solid opaque color there and i found that if i just pour that straight into my mold or let's make let's do that when i pour that straight into my mold i will get quite a a matte effect so i'm trying to do this so you can see but basically i'm just pouring my resin into the mold you can pour it in like that or you can use your mixing spoon to just scoop it up and drop it into the mold so there we go so i'll just get out as much as i can clean up is super easy too all you need to do is just pop this under this little bowl because it's silicone you just pop that under your uv light and it will cure inside the bowl so it's really easy to clean up like that so then i'm going to clean up my little stick uv resin will stick to hard plastic so you want to clean it up with a baby wipe rather than sticking this under a uv light because it will cure onto the plastic and you won't be able to get it off whereas with the silicone you can just pop this straight under a light and it will harden up and you can just peel it out so really easy to keep to clean up and yeah so there we go i've got all the bubbles out so now i'm just going to put my piece and my cup under the uv light i'm going to bring that down about over about 15-20 seconds and cure it like that now one of the things i like to mention to people is that before you take your piece out it's really handy to just flip it over and cure from the back side as well the reason i like to do this is when you're mixing up opaque colors the uv resin needs uv rays to fully cure to cure right through to the bottom so if you're mixing up really opaque colors you'll find that sometimes the uv rays struggle to penetrate through all the way through your piece so by flipping it upside down and curing from both sides you just eliminate that risk of having an uncured portion on the underneath side i'm sure that's done now so i can just turn that off and flip out my little button isn't that super cute so there's my blue opaque button so can you see how you could mix up as many different colors as you like and make buttons to suit all of your clothing and it literally takes 60 seconds to make a button okay and with our scraps all i do is just give my cup a little squeeze and i can peel out these pieces now you don't want to throw these out because i'm going to show you later a way that you can make use of every single scrap of resin that you have so i like to just put that to the side and i will definitely use that later on so to clean up again i just use a baby wipe i just run it around the inside of my cup and make sure to let that dry completely so we've made a couple of buttons let's put the button mould aside and grab out one of our other molds now what i love about these molds is that they have these little bits inside and that's actually going to create a hole in your piece for you so you can attach it to a necklace or earrings or anything you like so these molds are really fun so basically all i need to do is mix up some resin so again i'm going to pour a little bit more this time now one of the things you do want to keep in mind is that resin hates water so if you have any moisture in your cup um your piece might uh separate or it might not cure properly so you want to make sure that when you're using your cup if you've cleaned it with a baby wipe you just want to give it enough time to cure another way to clean up is by using alcohol so isopropyl alcohol is perfect because it evaporates so quickly it's a really good thing to use with your resin so i'm just going to put pop in a little bit of my rose red so this is a little bit of a pinky red and it's absolutely beautiful so i've put quite a lot of resin in my cup here so i've filled it up about a quarter of the way so i'm going to add quite a bit of my um i'm just going to add two or three drops of my pigment so i'm going to give that a stir and as you can see when i'm stirring it creates a bit of a swirled effect and that can be really pretty and you can use that to your advantage too by making a piece that has those swirls in it it can be really effective but what you can do is you can also mix your pigments so i really like this pink but i want it to be a little bit lighter and i want it to have that pearly effect that i was talking about earlier so i'm going to use my pearl pigment which is a crystal white and i'm just going to put a few more drops in now because as i mentioned this is a little bit transparent you do need a bit more of the white than any of the other colors to get that solid opaque color so i'm going to give that a stir and as you can see it's got that really cool marbled effect which again i could leave but i want to give it a really good mix and make that a solid pink color i loved working in layers you can get some really cool effects by layering your pieces you can also mix in batches so you can make matching pendant and earrings as well if you like so all you need to do to keep this liquid forever is keep it away from uv rays if it gets to the sun or you go to a window even and it gets too much light on it it will start to harden so if you want to keep this runny to work with you just need to keep it away from that light so i'm just going to pour in a little bit or about a third of the mold and resin is or uv resin is also self-leveling so it will level itself out and um and flatten on the bottom of the mold now i've got quite a bit left here so i'm actually going to make um another shape in my little mold here so i've got a little heart so i might make that one and pour it into that one so i can actually cure this heart and then insert it into one of my projects so i could pop that into another mould now i also would like to make this one which is just a tiny little cat face i don't know if you can see let me show you there that's a little cat face that i think is just the cutest so i'm going to put some resin in there as well and i might make a pendant with a pair of matching earrings little cat face earrings so for this one what i want to do is make sure i keep enough of my pink to make a second little cat face so that i have a set of matching earrings there we go so now what i like to do before i turn my light on is i'll take my little cup here with my leftover resin and i'll just pop it under the table because i don't want it to get cured accidentally when i bring over my uv light so i'm going to move all these pieces fairly close together so that i can cure them all in one go so i'm going to wait 60 seconds until that's fully cured then i'll make another little cat face and we'll move on from there [Music] do [Music] so uv resin does occasionally get a bit of a bad wrap it is uh tricky to work with sometimes but once you know the tricks it really is so much fun to play with i've got five tips that i'd like to share with you today that have made my pieces turn out almost perfect every time number five use clear silicone molds when you're working with uv resin so one of the biggest problems i've seen online is people will take out their molds that they use for traditional two-part resin and try and make it work for uv resin the biggest problem with that is that uv resin needs uv rays to cure and if the uv rays can't penetrate through that mold there is no way that your resin is going to cure fully so by using these clear silicone molds the uv rays are able to penetrate through from both side or all sides of the mold and you'll get a much better cure each time so i really love this mould it's little little puppy dogs and little puppy faces and if i there you go if i poured uv resin into this mold the uv rays would really struggle to get into all those little nooks and crannies and all those little details so unfortunately that mold is not really going to work with uv resin if you poured clear resin into there it would mostly cure and then you could paint your project but it really won't work if you used colored resin or opaque resin so i really suggest using these clear molds you will get the best results with those i also like to cure from both sides so once i've finished curing from the top i'll quite often flip my mold over and cure from underneath as well and you can't possibly do that with an opaque mold number four get out all your other craft supplies and use them with your uv resin i used to be a nail technician so i used to do nails so i have a lot of nail art supplies and nail art supplies are perfect to use with uv resin you can use all of your glitters you can get dried flowers you can get all sorts of things that you would normally use to decorate nails and insert them into your uv resin i like all types of craft i like quilting patchwork i love sewing i love knitting i love crochet i love making miniatures i like making bags i have so many crafty obsessions and every time i pick up a new craft i have to go and buy a heap of new supplies to use for that craft and what i love the most about uv resin is that i can use all of those products in the resin a few weeks ago i showed you how i inserted fabric just by mod podging that fabric and sealing it i was able to insert it into my resin so that's a great way to use up fabric and make even matching buttons to whatever clothing you're making just by inserting some fabric into your resin you can also take scrapbooking papers and as long as you mod podge them and seal them you can then insert them into the resin as well so all of those products that you have for other crafts you can use with uv resin [Music] do [Music] number three how do i cure black resin so again i see a lot of people make mistakes with uv resin when they color their resin so darkly or tint it until it's so opaque that again the uv rays cannot penetrate and all the way through so you'll have a nice hard cure on one side but flip it over and it won't be cured underneath or it might seal around the outside and still be soft in the middle let me show you what i mean do [Music] number two doming can fix almost anything so when you've almost finished a piece you've done multiple layers and it looks amazing from the top you pop it out of your mould and underneath looks a mess somehow that resin has trickled underneath the mold and it's created lumps and bumps underneath to fix that all i do is grab out a simple nail file and i like to use a 150 grit nail file and just give it a buff file that resin down until it's as smooth as you want it to be and it really doesn't even have to be that smooth just take off those sharp edges and then you can pour another layer of resin on top and it will cure to a beautiful high shine you don't even need to use multiple different sandpapers just give it a file get rid of the dust and pour on some more resin and you'll have a beautiful shiny piece oh and you can dough more than once so if you don't get it right the first time again give it a bath get rid of those sharp edges and pour another layer of resin on top it will fix almost anything number one cure your resin slowly and from both sides so one of the biggest mistakes i see people make is that they try to cure their resin too quickly or with the lamp too close to their resin so i know that uv lights have little feet and you think that the best way to cure your resin is to drop it down on top of your mould and cure close to the mold the problem with that is the uv resin cures too quickly and it will either craze so you'll get crack marks around the outside from it curing too quickly and pulling away from mold and it will shrink but the biggest problem it makes or creates is that it will make your piece bow especially if you're making big pendants or anything that's quite big you will always get bowing if you cure your resin too quickly so how do you slow it down it's easy just move your light further away from the mold so when i'm curing my pieces i will start with my mold or my sorry my with my light about 20 to 30 centimeters which is about 12 inches away and i will slowly bring that light down and cure my piece much slower than if i just put the light straight over the mold at a distance of only you know an inch or two so always start with your mold higher especially if it's a big piece if you're curing little buttons like this it doesn't matter you can just put the light straight on top and it will cure no problem no misshaping you may get a little bit of crazing around the outside but um most most small things will cure okay but as i said sometimes i'll cure big pieces from a distance for a full 30 or 30 seconds to a minute i'll hold that light up high and i will only bring it closer for the second minute now most pieces only take about 60 seconds to cure but if they're quite big i will actually cure them over two or three minutes because i find that i get much better results another thing to keep in mind is to make sure that you don't touch your piece or de-mold it until it's completely cooled down again you will get some bending if you remove your piece too quickly so what how do i do it basically i'll make my piece so i'll put the resin in into my mold i'll hold the light up for maybe 30 to 60 seconds and then i'll put it down and cure for another 60 seconds then if it's a big piece i'll actually flip the mold over and cure it for another 60 seconds from underneath once it's then completely cooled down and you can tell just by feeling the bottom of the mold if it's still a little bit warm leave it for longer don't take it out of the mould yet as soon as it's cooled completely you can then pop it out of your mould and you won't have any bending at all or very little do do do so there they are my five top tips for working with uv resin i hope that helps you with your projects if you'd like to have a go with uv resin i've got a link to a kit in the description box so it has everything you need to get started almost everything that i was using today is included in the kit so check that out on the crafty adventures website so thank you so much for joining me and please hit the like button if you'd like today's video i would love you to leave me a comment and tell me which one of the pieces that i made today is your favorite and don't forget to subscribe it really i know everybody on youtube says it but it really does help my channel youtube won't show anyone else my videos unless they think people are enjoying it so you if you hit the like button and comment then more people get to see my work so i really appreciate you subscribing and also don't forget to click the notification bell just so you're advised each time i put out a new video so thank you so much for joining me and i'll see you again next week as we craft up a storm bye [Music] you

Channel: Paula Storm

Views: 306,089

Keywords: UV Resin, Resin, how to, DIY, Paula Storm, Craft up a storm, beginners, top 5, crafty adventures

Id: rb-gQCveKo4

Length: 28min 35sec (1715 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020