Resin jewelry making and the dreaded bubbles

Bubbles.  That is a very bad word to someone working with resin.  I do everything I can when mixing to avoid them and look over my pendants closer than a mama hen watching her chicks to get them out when I pour.  That said, sometimes the little dirty fiends show up anyway -- completely uninvited.

When I poured resin yesterday, I made a big mess.  The resin was mixed in the cup, but I managed to spill some that had to get wiped up pronto.  Being the frugal artist that I am, I didn't want to throw the rest of the resin away, even though it had cured to the point of thick Karo syrup by the time I went to use it.  (Normally it's the runny maple syrup kind when I pour). 

There were some bubbles.  "Not to fear, I've done this before!" I assured myself.  I got my handy dandy heat gun and blasted them.  Normally this works, but today it didn't.  Those bubbles weren't going anywhere.

In a completely unrelated experiment, I learned a few months ago, that while this particular resin is only about 6 to 8 hours into curing, it's in one piece but flexible. 






If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. 

I pushed them off the edge and waited a few hours for them to cure.  (At this point, even if my experiment failed, the pendant was a bust anyway.  I had nothing to lose.)







An exacto knife later, I had trimmed the bubbly resin off and had a usable pendant again.  That will teach those bubbles to mock me.