Resin Snowflakes

I really love the way these turned out. I found that Facebook offers a store front. I'm hoping to get one created this weekend. I've already gotten a couple requests for these snowflakes.

***I made more of these snowflakes but with Amazing Clear Cast resin which I happen to like much better than Easy Cast or Envirotex Lite epoxy resins.  This snowflake I created using Amazing Clear Cast. I know one cannot tell the difference in the photographs between the three products, but if you were to compare the three up close you would be able to tell that Easy Cast and Envirotex Lite has a little bit of a yellow tint to the resin.

UPDATE (Thursday, June 7, 2012): I've been learning a lot about resins. I have recently learned that when buying resins that one should always check that the hardener hasn't turned yellowish. If the hardener is yellow, that means that it has been sitting on the store shelf for some time. I haven't had any issues with curing the older resins, but if you want your pieces to look perfectly clear then don't buy what's left on the shelf if there's any hint of yellow. Since learning this I have again purchased Envirotex Lite that was not yellowish. Although, I really do like the clarity of Amazing Clear Cast, I cannot use the resin any longer. I had a severe allergic reaction to it. 

Plastic Candy Molds & Resin

I was trying out a little experiment using plastic candy molds and epoxy resin. I wanted to see if I could use these less costly molds with resin. As you can see the snowflakes turned out nicely, however; removing the resin from the molds was not an easy task.

Now maybe plastic candy & soap molds do work with epoxy resins when a mold release is used. I failed to use any sort of resin mold release. I don't want to test out my other snowflake candy mold with epoxy or polyester resin since that's the only mold I have left. The cured resin pieces stuck to the plastic candy mold and do NOT release very easily and also NOT after sticking them in the freezer. I had to use scissors and pliers to pull the plastic and cured resin apart.

Here's a picture of the ruined mold...

I'm really reluctant to try polyester resin (I've read that it shrinks a little when cured) in the plastic candy/soap molds because there's a heating reaction that speeds the curing time. When I was mixing the polyester resin in a plastic cup - the bottom of the cup melted and spilled all over my working space. Thankfully, I had my working space covered up.