Tips for Working with Resin and Open Back Bezels

	Nunn Design 2-Part Epoxy Resin Kit, Jewelers Grade Clear, 8 Oz Kit SKU: TRC-14 $44.09
	CASTIN CRAFT Casting Epoxy Resin Opaque Green Pigment Dye 1 Oz SKU: TRC-83 $10.99
	CASTIN CRAFT Casting Epoxy Resin Opaque White Pigment Dye 1 Oz SKU: TRC-87 $10.99
	Open Back Bezel Pendant, Split Circle Crescent 16.5x13mm, Antiqued Silver, by Nunn Design (1 Piece) SKU: PNT-317 $3.95
	Open Back Bezel Pendant, Split Long Oval 38x13mm, Antiqued Gold, by Nunn Design (1 Piece) SKU: PNT-313 $4.69
	Open Back Bezel Pendant, Split Oval 23.5x9mm, Antiqued Gold, by Nunn Design (1 Piece) SKU: PNT-319 $3.95

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
hi this is kat with beadaholique.com and in this video i'm going to give you some tips and tricks for working with open back bezels and resin so before we get started here you can see that i already have my resin working and i'm using the nunn design resin today so i have equal parts a and equal parts of b in my little cup there and the cups come with the resin if you purchase the nunn design resin so that's what i have here as well as i have some smaller popsicle sticks i like to work with smaller ones as you can see here the nunn design resin does come with larger sticks which is actually great if you're going to be doing a larger resin pour but typically when i'm doing my resin i only do a few pieces at a time however once that resin is created you really have to make at least this much which if you look on the cup here we do one tablespoon and then two tablespoons so it's half and half so you really do kind of have to make this much it will help your resin set up a little bit better it really needs enough of that to make that chemical reaction so just so you know so i've gone ahead and mixed that so it's kind of just setting up for me right now you can see that it's all one homogenous color which is exactly what you want should be nice and clear and so i have a couple pieces here on my little pieces of tape so i'm going to show you how to do this first because this is a great thing you can do either before you mix your resin or while you're waiting for it to set up so i have just here some packing tape and what i like to do is anytime i finish my packing tape and if this has ever happened to you it's the most frustrating thing is to try to get that little tab off at the end so i leave a nice big tab because if you look here there's only a little tab there and it allows me to move the piece around without getting my finger stuck and then pulling up that resin it has definitely happened to me so this is a trick i have learned all right so i have my piece here so i'm just going to take some off i'm just going to cut a little length off of here and before i work with that i'm gonna come in and just make a nice nice loop on my tape just like that so it's all ready to go for next time that way you don't have to try to get your nail underneath there so i'm gonna set my tape aside so i have this piece with this piece folded over in the front i know it's clear so it's hard to see but then you just kind of fold this piece in leaving a sticky area in the center for your bezel now this is where you have to work in a little bit of a clean environment making sure there's no issues on that tape and then you take your piece here and you press it right down onto that tape and what i like to do is just kind of give it a little like a little movement around you know just make sure it's getting on all those little pieces try to keep your fingers out we don't want any fingerprints in there so just kind of move your fingers along the edge of the bezel and just kind of make sure that we're not going to have any spillage perfect you can also flip it over if you like just kind of holding it up here where i'm not going to be pouring that resin and just kind of run your finger along the back just to make sure all right so now i have my pieces that i can kind of move around now another thing is once you pour your resin before you do so i like to put mine under a little plastic bag you can see that my work surface is a little different today it's covered with some wax paper so that's what this is underneath here but i like to have this because it allows me again to move it around ideally we don't want to be moving around our resin once we've poured it however if you need to that's a good little trick is just to have a nice little plastic bag for each individual piece that way you can kind of move it around your workspace okay now the other thing to consider and i know this might be taking it maybe a little bit too far but as someone who's had some resin spill and some pieces ruined purchase a level and make sure that your work surface is absolutely 100 level no dips or anything in your work surface i know that might be taking it a little bit too far but like i said if you're especially if you're trying to create a domed look as opposed to a flat look today i'm going to be doing all flat looks on my pieces here but i do want you to be aware that having that fl like super duper flat surface will help the end result okay i'm just going to kind of check on my resin here okay good now the other thing that i want to talk about is we're going to talk a little bit about some pigments here so i have some opaque pigments i have a green which you can see is very very dark and then i also have a white now this pigment will probably last you a lifetime with the amount that is in here depending on what you're doing but i have some toothpicks here as well because the toothpicks actually help you kind of navigate exactly how much you want in each of your cups i'm going to do a green cup and a white cup and the great thing is that we do have a black as well so if you get the white and the black you can always make a darker green or a lighter green so it's just about that color mixing and you can just have a lot of fun with that just kind of discovering colors but again if you are trying to match colors let's say you're creating a line of jewelry and you want to create this piece and you want to make several pieces don't say to yourself oh well you know i think i'll i'll do the green today and then i i think i'll remember exactly how i did the green later in my experience it's very difficult to duplicate the exact color especially if you are trying to do so now i mean for most of my purposes if it's green it's green you know it's all right you know but you just want to be really careful if you are trying to create a very specific result okay so i'm going to let my resin set up here just a little bit more and then when i come back we're going to do some we're going to pour it in some cups we're going to add some pigment and then we're going to start adding it to our bezels okay so i have my cups here ready to go and as you can see i'm now wearing gloves if when you are doing that very first part where you're mixing the resin i recommend gloves as well just stuff can spill and that way you don't have to have it on your hands the other thing i wanted to say is have your lighter ready this is just a just a bic lighter you can also use a barbecue lighter as well sometimes that's easier on the hand and your fingers are a little further away from the flame so whatever your comfort level is there okay so i have my popsicle sticks i have my toothpicks here ready to go i have my pigments now the first part is i'm going to distribute this into two cups now i always like to leave a little extra resin just in case it doesn't work out so when i mean you need to start with at least one ounce there or your your two tablespoons the reason i say that is it has to have that chemical reaction but you'll notice when i pour it into each individual cup the resin is already set up so i don't need to do half and half you don't need to do that much if you don't need it you can see that my little bezels there are going to be nice and small so here's what i'm going to do i'm actually going to kind of scrape off my little piece here my popsicle stick just kind of scrape that off and hold that off to the side because i'm going to use it as like a little scooper okay so now i'm going to pour a little bit in this one and that should do it you can see i just kind of scooped the little last bit of it and i'm going to pour a little bit in this one and just kind of scoop that off all right so now it's going to drip down the side so i'm going to set that off but this is why you want to have your resin on a nice little piece of wax paper it really will help so i'm going to keep this popsicle stick clean and put it back in the resin over there now here are going to be my two cups let's start with the green because the green could be get the white actually so let's start with our green and just go ahead and set that aside now what i like to do here is i like to take a toothpick and drip it onto the toothpick ever so slightly see it's very very little that actually might be quite a bit so now i just can start swirling it in there and you can start to see that green develop it's really really beautiful now this is going to be an opaque color so you can make it as dark as you want it to however the way that pigments work with resin is you don't want to be adding too much because it will knock off that chemical reaction and your resin will just never dry and we don't want that so you can see that mine is still actually pretty clear you can see that a lot of that pigment kind of stays on that little toothpick there now here's something that here's why i have so many toothpicks in case you may have been wondering i like to not drip my color right into my piece there so what i'm actually going to do is i'm going to set i'm going to scrape this off and i'm going to set this aside onto my little plastic baggie there that way it's ready to just fold up and go so now i'm going to take another toothpick and i think i want to add a little bit more touch of green not too much just another little dab there we go that should be plenty and i'm just going to try to darken that green just a little bit just make it a little bit of a richer color now if you wanted to you could make this a little bit white or a little bit more opaque by adding that that white to it i'm going to leave mine as is i think it's a really beautiful color you can kind of see it when i pick it up there so i'm going to leave that and now let's go ahead and let's move on to the next one here i'm going to just close up my green though i thought i was going to add some white to that but it's actually looking really nice so here's my next cup and again coming in with one of my fresh toothpicks all right and same deal this is a little bit of a different top but that's okay it will work just the same you just have to be very careful about pouring out that white a little bit at a time okay so you can see i have just a little bit on the end of my toothpick and i'm going to go in and start to make that white just swirl it around i think i'm definitely going to need some more for this one because i want it to look very french enamel like so you can see that it's still very very clear so i think immediately i know that i'm going to add a little bit more but you can always add you can't subtract so keep that in mind all right i'm just going to go ahead and scrape that off now the reason i don't want to do this is i don't want to get resin back on here because then it will harden and then you'll never get to use this again so that is why we do that so i know it might be a little a little strange to have all of this oops sorry for the bump of the camera there apologize all right there we go nice nice good one and again you can clearly tell that i have a little bit more resin here than i'm going to actually need so it's absolutely fine to have other pieces ready to go or i always like to have a mold nearby because i can always use cabochons so if you have a nice cabochon mold that's a great way to utilize this okay there we go i'm liking that making sure i'm scraping all the sides i don't want any clumps of color there all right beautiful all right so stick with me we are ready for part three where we're going to actually add this into the bezels okay so now we are ready to add our resin now if you're working with a really small sliver like that i would recommend dripping your resin using the toothpick now you can see i've taken my gloves off and i do that for dexterity purposes because really it shouldn't be getting anywhere at this point everything should be done and ready to go so here's the tricky part all right let's go ahead and come in so we can see our piece here there we are okay beautiful okay so i have my resin here now when you drip it in i recommend kind of getting down to eye level here and making sure that that little drop you're prepared and it's going to go right where it needs to go so let's see if we can do this with the toothpick here i've never tried this here so this will be a first time there we go so just kind of let it let it fall let it drip it looks like we're going to need a little bit more in there all right so you can start to see it come in there just a little bit now this because it is so slim this is really really tedious here but you can just see that i'm kind of guiding it with the toothpick that's another thing i want you to kind of keep in mind but again this is why it's so important to have a nice level work surface and just let it kind of fill up the space the resin is really instinctive it will go where it wants to go you don't really have to force it too much so take this part really really slow i know if you're watching this this might be like oh come on just do it already but you want to take your time and that's what i kind of want to demonstrate here the the reason for that especially when you're adding small little globs like that all right now i just noticed that mine kind of leveled off so i'm just getting down and kind of looking and making sure that's exactly the way i want it to be and i am actually really really happy with that okay so now i'm going to move my green aside and just this is where i'm just going to adjust this just a little bit because i want it to be in camera normally i wouldn't be moving it all right and i'm actually going to come in with the white now and this is still a very small space so i'm still going to continue to drip with the white but you'll notice that i'm going to hold it a little bit differently so i'm going to kind of hold it at an angle and i can get a little bit more in there and be confident in kind of dripping right into that bezel there slightly larger globs if you will and you'll notice i'm kind of playing with the resin i'm just kind of guiding it to this side over here making sure it makes its way across the entire piece okay i think i can do one more here and i'm just gonna check my leveling so i'm down at eye level okay i can come back i can add a little bit more i'm seeing a little dip now i don't want to dome this i want it to feel flat so i actually think i was able to accomplish that there okay perfect so that is one piece down so i am going to move it off to the side all right now let's come in with this piece here now this is a slightly larger piece i i am not going to fill up the top i'm only going to do one on this one but i just want to show you how it looks by using a little bit of the popsicle stick in case you are filling a larger larger piece you can kind of just scoop it and drip it in just like that and again just kind of guiding it making sure not to touch those edges we don't want to get any resin on our edges there but what i recommend if you want to get started in resin and you're watching this video going oh no i i can't do that that's that's way too complicated get some pieces test it out try it out i promise you it's not as scary that's why i'm doing this video so that you can get some nice tips and tricks all right and i want you to come into this one and now for this one i'm going to go back to my toothpick here so i'm just going to scrape off my popsicle stick set that aside and i'm going to fill up the top one here so again kind of coming back down to eye level here making sure i get just enough but not too much because i want to make sure this first strip is really accurate and we're just going to drip right in the center there slower is better your results will be finer also you'll notice that i am i'm very lucky here i'm not getting a lot of bubbles but i think that is because i'm going nice and slow and just kind of letting the resin do its thing it wants to bond to the outer rim here and to the tape so just give it space give it its time don't mess with it too much it will tell you where it wants to go all right so actually i think i'm very happy with that okay so i'm going to set my resin aside let me see if i can get all three of these in frame just going to come out here just a little bit so now i have my three different pieces and they're all set to go now i usually like to let mine sit for like a minute or two until you come in with the lighter but the purpose of the lighter is to get any bubbles that may have occurred to bubble up and come to the surface so you'll see and i'm going to do it just on the center one so that you can actually see let me kind of come back in here beautiful all right so hold your lighter kind of to the side like this light it up and what you're going to do is you're just going to gently touch that to the surface just get it nice and close and those bubbles will disappear now i don't have any bubbles so you're not seeing them pop however that's how you do it all right so that concludes this video i hope you found this really helpful as you can see i have still a lot of resin left over i did not use very much to fill these perhaps if i had filled the other side of the bezels you know you can kind of use your imagination but i have some uh molds and stuff ready to go so i'm gonna go ahead and do that off camera but thank you so much for joining me i hope this was helpful you can get all of these supplies and see even more resin tutorial videos by heading over to beadaholique.com