New resin jewelry

Exciting news!

I have a new line of silver tone resin jewelry!  This has been in the making since January (with a couple of hiccups along the way), but they are looking sooooooooooo good!  So here are the details:

These pieces are like what I've been making, with a few exceptions:

• They are made of pewter
• No open backs
• Sterling silver filled ear wires (Read about sterling silver filled wire)

They still have yummy colors and a soft, satin finish.

Here's a few random pictures:

These are a tray of mostly earrings.  There are earring singles (round or square) or earrings doubles (double circles or square/circle).











A closeup of a couple of the pewter pendants before they are filled with colored resin.

Why make resin jewelry out of pewter?  There are actually a few reasons for this:

Sterling silver prices are obnoxious.  (Get precious metals quotes at kitco.com.)  I have created these new resin jewelry pendants and earrings to have the same artistic look as my sterling silver resin jewelry, but I can do it for about a third of the price.  The other neat thing about pewter is that it is an alloy of tin and copper.  (Sometimes it includes lead, but my jewelry does not.)  It's not going to tarnish like sterling silver does.  I love the silver pieces but with the price of silver now and the economy still on uncertain ground, my retail and wholesale customers have been asking about alternatives.  I still have some sterling silver and resin jewelry pieces and will be happy to do the new designs in sterling silver by special order.



 
A group of the new pewter pieces lined up and ready.













Normally, I only do one color pour a day, but since I need to get samples ready to go to ACRE Las Vegas next week, I've been doing two pours a day:  one in the morning and one in the evening.  Here, I've done an orange and a purple color pour.










These are the same orange and purple colors in earrings.











After I get done pouring a batch, I have to let it cure for 24 hours before I can do another pour (at least in the same piece).  To keep the dust off of the resin jewelry pendants and earrings, I cover them with plastic containers.








Ah, they're starting to come to life!  This is after a couple of days.  At this point, I've also done a green, pink, and yellow pour.  Notice the resin cups and dirty paper towel at the top of the picture?  I'm getting the resin all over my kitchen countertops.  It almost looks like a birthday cake has exploded.









Another closeup of the future earrings with resin.  There are a few mistakes to sand off once they're cured.











More colorful resin pendants.














This picture is the reason why I only do one color then let it cure for 24 hours before pouring the next one.  The orange was poured on Tuesday.  The turquoise was poured on Thursday.  The dark blue was poured today (Friday).  Some of the dark blue spilled onto the orange.  The orange was completely cured (hardened) so I just had to wipe off the dark blue.  If I poured all the colors on the same day, the dark blue would have mixed into the orange if it had still been wet and the piece would have been ICK.






This picture was after today's pour.  You can see that in addition to the previous colors, there are some reds, pinks, turquoise and yellow/green.

Don't they look good enough to eat???  I will try to have some finished pictures up next week.