Modern Floral Preservation with Resin

1. Introduction to Modern Floral Preservation: Hi. Welcome to my course. My name is Sarah and today I'm gonna be showing you how to preserve your flowers in a modern way. We're gonna be using silica gel to dry them so that they look like they did when they're fresh. And then I'm going to be using some molds with resin to preserve them in a really pretty way, cut to kind of look like an art piece that you can display at home. This is a great technique if you just got married and you want to save your bouquet or if you just really love flowers and want a cool, interesting way to display them. This is an example of one of the flowers that I dried and then, uh, put it in a mold with residents square mold. So it's just a little Q but the flower inside. And yes, we will be using resin. So please be careful when using on epoxy. I have a section in this course explaining the precautions that you need to take in order to be safe while using resin, so make sure to watch that before you get started. 2. Drying Flowers in Slica: So to get started, we're gonna get some fresh flowers and dry them. I went to my local florist in the early winter season, and these were the flowers I picked up. Unfortunately, I can't remember what they're called. I the only one I remember is obviously the rose and the spray roses. The roses I have dried and put in resin have tended to lose color in the center. But all the other flowers I have shown here kept their color really well. Even these which I was a little bit unsure about that. They kept the purple and the whites very nicely. And the spray roses also kept really vibrant. So I'm not sure if it's something in the drying process, but something I will have to look into. And just something else I thought I would mention. So now that you have your flowers, you're gonna need a container to put your silica inside. I try to find something that is almost the size of the flower itself. I like to make sure to keep my flowers separate. So you wanna have flowers that are of the same kind together? Because every type of flower will have a slightly different period of how long they require to dry, and this is what I used to drive my flowers. It is silica gel. It's different than the silica you would find with your running shoes. It's almost like sand. It's a good idea to do this outside because silica is so fine, it gets into the air. It's not necessarily toxic, but you don't really want to be breathing it in because it is so fine. So I do wear a mask when I do this, and if it's nice out, I would do this outside again. It was winters. It was quite cold. The first thing I do is put a layer down on my container, and this is just a place for the flower to initially land on. You can use plastic containers. I didn't have any, so I'm using glass, just something that you can close the lid and seal. So you'll want to trim your flowers depending on the project for what I'm doing, I'm going to trim the stem very, very close to the flower itself because I'm gonna have it sitting on its back. So the least so the flatter, basically, it sits for me, the better. But depending on your project, you might want to keep more of the stem. Ah, but for the purposes of this course, I am cutting off as much as possible. You'll also see with the rose that some of the pedals aren't looking so nice. And I don't really want to keep those. So I'm just gently pulling those away. So the nicer pedals underneath are what are going to get dried and then be put into the resin. Okay, so now I've cleaned up my flowers and they're ready to be put in the silica gel. So I'm going to start with this rose and this container that fits my rose. Really well, you want to have that base down so that the flower can stand up nicely, and then you want to fill it around the sides First, the silica can become quite heavy if you just poured in the middle. And then this condition distort the way that your rose naturally is. So to support the rose from the sides. You just need to put the silica around it first. That way, the pedal. Stay up nice and strong. And then you can pour the silica into the pedals. You want to make sure that you do get it into the pedals as much as possible. Um, especially with the rose, it goes quite deep, so you may have even wanted to put a little bit down there while filling the sides. Maybe that would have helped keep the color a little longer. So just keep filling it up until the silica has totally covered the rose and you don't see any of the color or the pedal sticking out. It needs to be fully submerged in the silica sand or the silica gel, and then I just put a little on top of it and put it to the side. There is a little piece of paper that comes with the silica gel container, and it tells you how long each flower takes. I will put a link to that in the resources so you can download that. PdF and usually it's somewhere between a week to two weeks, sometimes a little less than a week again, every flower has a different length of time. Okay, so I'm going to do this for all of the flowers in the same way just putting the gel or the sand around the base and then around the sides to support the structure of the flower and then gently going into the pedals and placing the silica every in every nook and cranny. Basically, also, one thing I forgot to mention is that you should have your flower sitting upright in your container of silica, um, so that it has the same shape cause, however, you place it into your container with the's silica gel. That is how it's gonna dry. And once they are all done, you want to put the lids on. I do recommend putting a lid on the container because you don't want anything disrupting it . You want to just keep it to the side. Ah, the reason why I had Saran wrap on here is because I couldn't find the lid. So I put plastic wrap on top and then eventually found the lid. But you don't need to put the plastic wrap on top. Just the lid is fine, so just put it in a spot where known Kentucky it, and it can just chill and dry for the length of time that it needs. So once my farmers were done. I am now taking the sill kajal out to check them out. And the way I'm doing this is just pouring it into a larger container. Again. The silica is going to get everywhere in the air. So if you could do this outside, I suggest that and wearing a mask and even old clothes because it the clothes do kind of absorb that fine sand. And then they kind of smell like silica, which basically smells like sand. So to get thes out, I'm just using my hand. You could also use something like a pancake flipper or Burger Flipper, where it has the holes where the sand can go through. Um, you can tell right now I'm just feeling it. It should kind of feel like paper tissue paper. And it has that sound of dried paper, basically. Ah, that's how you know it is fully dry, and you want to try the best you can to get all the silica out. I am doing that by kind of moving it around and hoping that it falls out. But you can also grab a soft paintbrush or makeup brush and just dust it to get some of the sand out it. You have to be very, very gentle because the flowers are obviously very fragile. But do the best you can because you don't want to get, um, the sand in your silicone moulds because it can scratch the surface and I'll show you how that affects the resin when it's finished at the end. Because I did do that by accident before so learned from my mistakes. So this flower is very open, so it should be pretty easy to get the sand out. It's harder and flowers like the rose, where the pedals go very deep and there's a lot of looking nooks and crannies, and it's hard to get in there with a brush. So just take your time and move it around. Shake it up and down. Just get as much as you can out. As you can see, this flower looks really, really beautiful. After being dried, it looks basically the same as it did when it was fresh. The color is still there, and the shape is still intact, so silica is a really great way. Teoh. Keep your flowers for as long as you want, without losing their natural beauty. So I'm now taking out the rose again. This one I find the most difficult to get. All the silica sand out. I just take as much as I can, but these pedals go quite deep and they're very tight together, so it's hard to get in there with a brush. Um, and make sure that all the sand is out. Okay, so I've got all my flowers ready to go. They look beautiful and can't wait to get them in resin. So now that thief lower drying portion is over, We're going to move on to some resin safety basics. 3. Planning Your Piece of Art: Okay, So before we start pouring the resin, we want to make sure that we know what we're doing. So we don't waste any resin and avoid any mishaps. So I want to plan out how I want my pieces toe. Look, you might have already done this before you picked out the flowers cause you knew what you wanted to dio. But I just went and bought whatever fires I like, So I have no idea what I want to dio. So I'm pulling out all the molds I have and basically like testing out how they fit within the molds. I do love using this round one for roses. I think it looks really nice. And it fits the rose shape really well. So I am going to use this one for the rose. I just needed to trim the stem a little bit so it could fit in a little bit better. And you can see the stem part if you get it tow line up with that hole at the bottom. It will just kind of sit a lot nicer. So for my larger flower, I'm gonna use this larger square mold. The's silicone moulds are really great. You congrats them from Amazon or other shops that make them themselves. The when I just showed you is actually a baking mould. Same with this purple one here. Um, so there's lots of ways you can use molds, but you don't have to use silicone moulds. You can also use a wooden mould similar to something you would see for people who make soaps where it has a wooden frame. And then first reason you could put a piece of plexi glass of the bottom. Or you could do it on, um, silicone mat and then tape it down. There's lots of ways you can do that. Ah, if you want to know more about that, you can check out some of the links and the resources to other videos where people do that . But I'll put a quick photo here so you can see what I'm talking about. However, if you are just starting out, I would suggest that silicone moulds, because they are relatively relatively inexpensive and really easy to work with to get started. Okay, so I've spent some time playing around with placement and the different molds, and I'm confident in my designs So next up is the resin pouring. One thing you can do is an extra step to avoid bubbles is sealing your flowers with a varnish spray. I normally do this with my press flowers with Marge Bajaj, but obviously that's more difficult with this type of flower, So a spray is better. I tried this with just one of these flowers, and I'm not really sure how much of a difference it made, but it might be worth trying. 4. Resin Safety: every resident company has a safety data sheet that even download. But in general, I don't believe that any resident is safe to use, like without proper equipment and just in your home, as you would use. Like I don't know, acrylic paints so have, like five different ways that you can be safe when using resin. The 1st 1 which is pretty obvious and every resin packaging will tell you this is to use in a ventilated area. So if you have a garage or a shed, I think those air probably the ideal places to do it. I don't love doing in my living room, but I do live in a condo so I don't have a garage. But you do want to make sure you have windows, doors, whatever open. You want all of that air to just go outside and not stay in the room you're in. Right now, it's winter, so it's freezing, which means I can't have the windows open because the resident won't cure in really, really cold weather or really really damp, wet weather. So I'm basically on a seasonal break because it's not safe to do resin in a condo where you don't have any airflow basically well, proper airflow. You also want to make sure that you don't have any. You also want to make sure you don't have any of your pets around. Is not safe for pets or Children or any other humans to be around when you're doing any resin mixing because they don't have that proper gear or safety precautions for them, especially animals. So just be very, very careful that those people or your pets are not in the same room. So Number two is also a very obvious one because most packaging for resident will say is use gloves. I have these natural gloves. He's the ones I've been using. Um, I think that they are getting not for resin, Uh, but again, I would do your own research. I'm not an expert, but these are what I have been using, and you can also double double up on the gloves. So just wear two gloves were on top of each other. They do tend to snap quite easily. Well, I haven't really had them snap easily on my hands, but I have seen in videos where they have snapped for other people. So if you have one underneath and you're like good to go in just extra safe. So definitely you want to make sure you're wearing gloves. Resin is not only not great have on your skin, but it's also really, really difficult to clean off. I believe that there's a soap that people use something like has orange in it, and people I have mentioned that they leave out right by the sink as an emergency in case they do get resin on their hands. Then they can use this special type of soap to clean it off. I do find like rubbing alcohol and nail polish remover can remove resin from surfaces if I accidentally get it somewhere, but you don't want to use that to get it off your skin. Eso make sure you use gloves so you don't get it on your skin, and you also want to do the third stage precaution, which is where the proper clothes. So make sure you're wearing long sleeves and something old, because even if you do get resin on your clothes like it's gonna ruin them. So you guys are old ones, but you also wanna wear long sleeves so you don't accidentally get any on your arms. So the last two precautions are ones that I was not using at the beginning but are super super important. And you should definitely invest in thes two if you're going to start resident, so the 1st 1 is a respirator. This is 1/2 mask respirators. You can also get a full mask respirator, which is just that much better. It's just a little bit extra for precaution cause it's gonna cover the rest of your face. You want to make sure that the cartridges filter organic vapour. I believe that's what I honestly took me a long time to find the right respirator. I was in a lot of Facebook groups and asking a lot of questions every race from different countries. So there's different respirators for a different countries, I guess, and there's so many different cartridges. So again, do your own research. But as far as I know, the organic vapour cartridges what you're supposed to use. I got this for my hardware store lows, and it was pretty inexpensive. I think it was like 30 or $40. You want to make sure that it's working when you put it on your respirator should come with instructions that when you put it on, you can actually test to make sure that it is filtering air. And then these cartridges don't last forever. So you want to make sure you change them when you need to. If you have 1/2 mass like me than the fifth precaution I recommend is glad. Safety glasses. These ones are large enough to fit over top of prescription glasses, so you couldn't wear those underneath as well. And that's just gonna protect your eyes. Because if you are a resident, your eyes, that would be absolutely horrible. I put this on first. I hope that was helpful again. I'm not an expert on resin or safety precautions. This is just what you should be doing as a bare minimum. If you're using resin, if you have any questions, I'll try my best. Answer them. However, I recommend joining some Facebook groups on resin because there's, ah, huge community on there that you can ask questions Teoh and just getting other people's experience and opinions and also like finding fax of your own. I recommend that because that's kind of where I learned a lot and just be careful 5. Mixing + Pouring Resin: Okay, so you've already seen the resin safety video, so you know what's needed for that? But other than those tools, this is what I use. I use art resin, which is one part resin and one part hardener. Um, I also use this silicone spatula. I find it's easier to keep clean, and it's non organic materials. So hopefully it causes less bubbles when I stir, rather than a wooden Popsicle stick, which is an organic material. And I'm afraid that that could cause slightly more bubbles for measuring. I use plastic cups, not silicone cups. I find that it's easier to pull the resin off when dry and harden from plastic cups where the silicone cups it kind of sticks on and flakes off, and it's just really annoying to clean. So I suggest getting a bunch of plastic cups. I like to have a bunch of small ones with the measurements down the side. They're really helpful. You could never have too many, and on the topic of minimizing bubbles, I will address this throughout the process. There are different points in the process, which can create more bubbles before I pour or mix. I give my resin, a little bit of a bath. I just sit them in warm water, not hot but warm, and I just let them sit for approximately five minutes. This just kind of, I think, thins it out, makes it less thick and visco, so it helps the bubbles move to the top a little bit easier rather than them getting stuck , you know, deep in the resin. So for the pouring and the measuring, I am doing again a 1 to 1 ratio. And this is one toe one with, ah, measurements of like millimeter mill of leaders or cups or ounces, not grams, so it should not be measured by weight. With this resin, every reason is different. This is an art resin, so it's not a casting resin. A casting resin might be better for florals because it is meant to be in thicker quantities . And also it's a thinner viscosity like unlike this resin, so the bubbles do escape easier. I have just always used art resin. It's easily accessible where I'm located, but I've also heard good things and seen people used liquid diamonds. So those are the two resins I would suggest Art resin is easy to find, and it has. It is a good quality resin, so you can get a minimal amount of bubbles. But I think with liquid diamonds you get even less bubbles. So I am placing my timer for six minutes. Art resin recommends about three minutes, but because I am going to stir so slowly, it does take me a little bit longer. You'll know once it's really mixed when those swirls and those lines are completely gone and your resin is totally transparent. So this is what the mixed resin looks like. These air, what bubbles I have created, and that's not too many. It's not too bad. It's not great, but I think that's pretty good. I have a couple more tricks that I used to get rid of the bubbles. I do take a heat gun and heat up that resin to try and get rid of the some of some of the bubbles. This does increase your working time. Um, so that's what I'm doing right now is I'm studying my clock for 30 minutes because that's how much working time I have. So I let it sit for 10 minutes as well. Toe let some of those bubbles escape on their own. So that's why the clock is that now 19 minutes. Because I just put the resin aside and let some of the bubbles come up to the top. And I might even take my heat gun another time and try and get rid of them. Just keep in mind that heating up the resin does reduce your working time or your pot time . So now important the resident into my mould. I want to create a layer first so that when I place my flower down, it's not sticking out of the resin. If that makes sense, I'm just gonna have basically like a glass layer, so this layer is resin by itself. So again, I'm constantly thinking about bubbles and how to reduce them as much as possible. So I find that pouring slowly helps. I don't know if that's proven, but I like to poorer slowly and then kind of move it around to move that resin around, also because I want to make sure that it fills in all of the corners with molds and resin. Sometimes a bubble can get trapped in corners, and then you're left with like an open part Right now, I'm using my lighter to get rid of some of the bubbles you can use. Ah, lighter like this. Or you can use a heat gun, which I did use when I was starting to process. I just want to show you some of the different tools. I don't want to use a blow torch for this project because I don't want toe accidentally singe any of the flowers. That's why I'm sticking with a lighter or a heat gun. And it's really hard to see in these dark colored molds if you do have bubbles because it actually looks crystal clear. So that's why I'm using my flashlight on my phone to get in there and double check. So I'm just gonna do the same thing for all my molds again. Just putting a first layer down the mold, them pouring into. Now it's a bit of a geometric shape, so these air one of the molds where there's lots of corners and which is a lot of opportunities for air bubbles to get in the corner. So again you want to just like move it around and make sure that you get it all in the corners, sometimes with triangle molds. I'll even take a toothpick or something really pointy, just to get all the way down into the corner to make sure that the reds in is pushed all the way in there. I do use a thicker resin, the art residence. That's another reason why it may not get in those tiny, tiny nooks. But something thinner might have an easier time of doing that because the rose in the circle or the spear is the exact same size as thesis fear. I'm actually just gonna put the rose in right away and pour. It should be fine. It should not be touching the outside, but I just don't want to add resin and then put the Rosen later, and it have taken up too much space, so this would have concluded my very first layer. This project is going to take about 6 to 7 layers when working with resin, especially this resin I use, which is art resin. The company's suggests not doing any layers thicker than an eighth of an inch. Going thicker than that can cause a lot of issues and can be quite dangerous because the resin can overheat. Not only that, it's going to be better for bubbles if you keep the resin layers very thin, because then it's easier for the bubbles to escape. So this is the first layer, and I'm going to be doing this whole process over and over again until I fill up the whole spear. So I'm gonna let this cure. Ah, you don't have to let it cure the full 24 hours. I let it cure until it's kind of a gummy state. And then that means I can pour my next layer. You actually don't want to let it cure until it is fully hard, because then the resin is going to be slick and smooth, and so when you pour your next layer is not gonna have anything to adhere to. You'll need to sand it to give it some grit. So I usually wait somewhere around 4 to 5 to six hours, and then I do my next poor. So that's what I did here. I did my next port, and then I sat the flower in. So now the flower has something to stick Teoh. But it's not that first layer, which I wanted to be clear, and I poured a second layer for all the rest the molds again as well. You'll notice for the large purple flower, actually, for that one, I don't intend on filling it up all the way only halfway. So the fire is still sticking out. So what I'm doing with each poor is pouring over the pedals on top because I want to make sure that when I'm done, even though it's only gonna be filled up halfway, the pedals that are exposed are going to be covered fully in resin. So you're gonna want to do this process six or seven times. And in between each poor, you're not going to be able Teoh peel out the resin from a cup as I'm doing here, because it's not gonna have long enough time to cure. So what I do is I have about five measuring cups so I can use a new one each time and then that way, after 24 hours, it's really easy to clean. You can just pull it out like this. However, if you only have one or two measuring cups, I use a paper towel and usually rubbing alcohol or nail polish remover to clean the stickiness from it inside out. And I always wear gloves when I do this. 6. Demolding Resin: Okay, so all of my layers have hardened, and this is probably the best part of the whole process, although sometimes a little scary cause you don't know how it's going to turn out. But it's so much fun d molding them. So first I'm going to start with the geometric shape and dim old that one and see how it looks. Sometimes it's a little bit difficult to get the resin out of the molds. Some shapes are easier than others. There is something called, um, old relief. I think that's called and you can spray that inside the mold and it acts as some us like, just a way Teoh get thes out faster and easier. It's like a lubricant. I guess I have personally not Easy says. They haven't needed one that much. But just in case you dio so this is what it looks like when it's finished. I have a lot of really nice sharp edges, which is great. There were some air bubbles that got caught around the side of the flower. You can see one right there, so it is kind of like an open pocket, which I'll show you how to fix later. But you can also see that there's not that many air bubbles. There is definitely some, but it's like it looks nice. It's not overpowering the's cube moulds. I find the hardest to get out because the edges air quite sharp. So just be careful because they can scratch your hands up and it can be kind of painful. So just be patient and take your time. Eventually, this will come out. You just want to make sure all the edges are unstuck. This one had a couple of air bubbles as well. I think the flower was the exact size of the width, so it just had that area where some air got caught. You can also see if you look really closely each of the layers where I poured. You can kind of see because the Bible, the bubbles rose and then you would pour another layer so you can see those layer lines by the amount of bubbles. And this is also why I will tend to baby sit my bubble. So if I pour and then I walk away and come back like 1/2 an hour later or 10 minutes later and then I might just use my lighter again just because some of the bubbles will have risen and then you can grab them when they're at the top. So if I did a better job baby sitting, the maybe I wouldn't see all of the layers as much. So I'm do molding my spear now, and you'll see there's a line of resin around it, which is kind of unavoidable. And then there's also some scratches on the top. And that's because I got silica stuck in the top of the mold and then was trying to get it with my finger. And I scratch the shiny surface of the plastic, so that's kind of ruined for forever. So I would advise you not to do that. If you get silica in your mould, just rinse it out and then pat it dry. They want to make sure it's very dry cause you don't want water in your resin. Okay, so this is my last one and my favorite one. It is where the large flower is half in and half out of the resin. Each time I did a poor I made sure to cover all of the pedals. Ah, significantly so that none of them would be like fragile, like a dried flower. I wanted all of them to be covered in enough resin that they would be quite hard. The little roses are totally under the resin, which looks also kind of cool. So on the back of this piece, there's a Matt surface, like where it's not shiny, and that's because I trimmed off raised edge in my mold with an Exacto knife on. I can either go over that with resin or sand it, which I will show you later on. Um, you can also see all of the layers here where the bubbles kind of meet the top of the surface. I definitely could have done a better job of baby sitting this and getting rid of the bubbles, but I think it still looks really nice. You will notice that the sides kind of bow a little bit, and that's because this silicone mold wasn't rigid enough. So the resin kind of like the structure kind of lost its strength, I guess. Um, so for larger pieces that you want to be a perfect square, that is where I would suggest kind of that would mold. I think that would work a lot better in these kind of cases. 7. Cleaning Up Part 1 - Trimming: Okay, so if you're lucky enough to dim old something that's perfect, then that's great. But more often than not, that is not gonna be the case. So it's important to know how to clean up your molds or a story or resin projects so that they look perfect. The first thing you want to do is get rid of any flashing, and that's the extra resin that kind of comes out from So you know where the molds meat or where the molds ends and it kind of goes over. Um, you want to minimize this as much possible when you're doing the process of pouring, but it's pretty easy to fix. You just want to use an Exacto knife, and you want to get it as flush as possible, like this flat as possible, because you will have to sand this. So if you can cut off as much of the raised edge as you can, that's going to save you a lot of time in the future. You also want to be really, really careful. You may even want to wear gloves while doing this, because this could be very dangerous if you accidentally miss and cut yourself, but basically, just take your time and make sure to cut as much as you can without, you know, getting into the resin and causing like a dip in the resin. You don't want that. Sometimes just getting rid of some of the flashing is all you'll need to do, and it's good to go. But majority of the time you may need to go in and sand some areas. Um, this one would have been perfect. If it wasn't for that line on the back, I would have been able to stop here. 8. Cleaning Up Part 2 - Sanding: Okay, so this is my least favorite part of the process and that it's sanding. Um, you want to sand any of the parts that basically aren't perfect? So for the spear, I have that raised seem that I got rid of with the Exacto knife with seem is still there. Also, I have the scratches from the silicone mold that I basically ruined. And then for this guy, I have the back. Unfortunately, that Matt seem I need to just sand this surface up so I can do a layer of resin overtop which will make that line go away completely. And then this one actually doesn't really need a whole lot. I might just sand the edges because they're a little bit sharp, but that's all that I need to do for these three. I mean, when I say that's all that, it makes it seem quite minimal. But the sanding is a lot of work, so I use a wet or dry sandpaper, and I use it wet so that it minimizes the A resin getting into the air. I use a bunch of different grits all the way from 3 20 up to 1500 so you want to do the same because you want small increments as you go up, and you also want to wear your mask and your gloves. When you do this process, you just want to start at the bottom one and work your way up. Just put on a movie and do your best, cause this is gonna take a long time so you have to just what you're sandpaper first. And then again, make sure gloves are on. The same papers have been used, and that's why there's all that white resin on it. But once you have your gloves on, you just start from the lowest or the sorry, the most coarse grit and then work Europe to the way up to the finest grit with the finest Great. You're just going to get that much closer to a smooth surface, so you kind of have to do all of the sanding in between. If you want to end up with a glossy surface because sanding will rough up the surface, unfortunately, and it doesn't look nice, But in order to get it back to looking glossy, you have to do all of the increments of standing in between. If you just do the most course and then go up from the most fine, you won't be able to get that glossy surface. So just take your time and do all of the steps in between. I got thes from a local hardware store there in the card section, where you would detail your car so you should be able to find them there for each Ah, round. I basically go in one direction, and then for the next round, I go in the opposite direction. Just a little tip, and I try and do it on a flat surface. It was a little bit hard for this one with the flower sticking out, because I had to be very careful because the fire was sticking out. But for the geometric shape. I just did that on a hard table and then for the sphere shape. I did it on my hand so that I wouldn't get like a flat service made on this fear. So they're all been sanded, and this is what they look like, which, um, is not very nice there. This one's a little wets. That's why it looks glossy. But when you dried up, you'll see a has very foggy look, but the seam is completely gone, which is amazing. So it's just a circle without that seem around the side. Ah, so now we'll just have to polish it to make it look like a nice, glossy finish. And this one, you can see that that edge is totally gone, which is nice, and I didn't even really need to sand that to get rid of the edge. I think if I just put a layer of resin that it would have been gone, and then this one is. You can barely tell the difference, but it's just smoother, so it's not sharp around the bottom. 9. Cleaning Up Part 3 - Polishing: Okay, So now that we have sanded all our pieces using all the different papers from the really, really gritty paper all the way to the really fine paper, I then move into the polishing stage. So I use a Dremel. This is what I have. It is the master craft courted rotary tool kit. Just show you the box. So I used that. And then I have container with all the different pieces. So I will fit it with one of these soft heads here and then use that to polish. But I will also put this all over the resin piece. It is the McGuire's plastics, clear plastic cleaner and polish. There's lots of polish is that you can find that are similar to this in the auto section of a hardware store, because these are usually used to remove scratches, cloudiness and oxidation, for example on your headlights. So I do that, and, uh, it takes quite a while. It's a little bit tedious, but kind of the same situation as the standing papers. And if you want, you can. Also, before polishing, you can also taken even finer sandpaper like a micro mesh or even those buffing, uh, sticks like the cube that you would use for your nails. There is, like a fine side and extra fine side, so usually I will just go over with that as well before polishing, just to give it like an extra push to the next step. But polishing usually does its job as opposed to. As you can see here, this one is back to its glossy state from when it was totally cloudy from standing, so you should be able to get it back lost weight by standing with all those bricks, paper artists to the finest, possibly find not missing any of the stuff in between. It is extremely tedious by worth your while because you get something really perfect and again, and then you want to use the Dremel with plus X to bring up fact that high shine that Web has don't have to use a Dremel when you use this, but it will be significantly better because it's going to take a long time and a lot of strength from your arm to do it by hand. Um, one thing to mention, and I think I already mentioned this before, but with the silicone moulds. You want to make sure you you get a mold that has a shiny surface on the insides was finished with a glossy kind of look rather than a mat. Look, because depending on what your silicone finishes, that will depend on how your resin turns out. So, yes, for this piece, I did sand everything, so it didn't matter. I could have used a map mold, but for some pieces, like this one, I didn't sand anything around here. I only sanded the bottom. So for this one, in order for it to get this very glossy finish that you can see here, the silicone more needed to be glossy on the inside. If it wasn't glassy on the inside and it was Matt, then I wouldn't have this really nice, glossy finish. So that's just a tip. In case you're finding that you're resin when pulling out of the mold is not glossy, that is probably why 10. Cleaning Up Part 4 - Resin Layer: for this process. I'm gonna touch up my pieces using a resin. And I did put taper on the edges. Ideally, a would have taped front side to for the drips that come underneath. But because the flower was sticking out, there wasn't room for the tape. So I was hoping to pour just enough that it wouldn't really go over The edge is it? Would more so dome on top. But I mess this one up and I poured way too much residents. You'll see that it just poured where the sides and then it got stuck on the plastic cup, so you'll see that later. So my advice here is to use probably only this amount and then just spread it out. You could spread it out with a brush that you don't want to use anymore or with your finger with a glove on. Just spread out this amount so that it basically gives it that varnish or that finished. So it goes back to that glossy look. I, however, one head and added more. I am similar to how I do with my Alcohol Inc pieces that I have in another skill share video. I think It was just a bad habit were not a bad habit, but just something that I naturally wanted to dio. And I just did that here. But, uh, don't do that. This is already too much resin, and I say it's too much resin because I don't have the security of the tape underneath to catch the fallout. If I did, then it wouldn't matter, because you could just get rid of those strips really easily when you pull the tape off. But because my tape only covers the sides, this resin is gonna drip down the sides and then fall underneath onto the front of the art piece. So I'm going to do that Cube now, which is going to be a lot easier to dome because sides do come up a little bit. So it was a little bit more careful with this one. I poured a very small amount onto the top, and then I just kind of picked it up and moved it around so that the resin could go into all of the edges and make sure that the top is fully covered. So those were the easy touch ups, and I'm going to show you how to use UV resin to touch up any holes in the next video 11. Cleaning Up Part 5 - Fixing Holes: Now we're gonna try using a UV resin to fix some holes or cracks. UV resin is a different type of resin that is hardened by a UV light. So I have some small bottles because I don't use a lot of this. I use only a small amount for, like I said, any holes or things that would be difficult to do with with the resume. Normal use and can't just be sanded and refinished. These are a few examples of what I would use UV reason for. As you can see on this dice, there's just an air bubble that got stuck in the corner so I can fill those holes with UV resin and same with the pyramid and the cube. You still want to use all of your normal PPE PPE, meaning your, um, protection. So your gloves and your mask so you can see with this cube. There's a few holes. Those were air bubbles that got trapped in along the side, so to fill those, I'm just dropping a few drops of the UV resin into that hole until it reaches the top. If you're really good and you can get it totally flat then good on you. But generally I will still have a bit of a bump on top. Um, so that's OK, because I'll just sand that a small part down and then basically polish it, as I did with the spear earlier in this course to cure the resin, you'll just want to use a UV light. You can use something like I have here, which is just a flash lately where you have to just hold it on top and hold it for I think about a minute and then, uh, issued be hard by then. Or you can use those ones that they use for the nails where it kind of just sits. You can, like, put the resin item underneath it and just let it sit there by itself. So you don't hop toe, hold the flashlight. This was just what I got off Amazon, because is pretty inexpensive and small for storage reasons. I have a couple of their examples that I'm going to show you how I, Paul are fixed them up. These ones I didn't do earlier with flowers. This one was done with a pyramid mold and gold leaf. And with the pyramid mold the sharp point at the end. I seem to always get air bubble there, unfortunately, but this one's pretty easy to fix. I just put like a dot at the top, and then I also have that dice that had a corner with an air bubble, some kind of doing the same thing, the dice when I fixed with you. The reason I do often have to sand those sides because they won't be perfect. But with the speed or the pyramid, there's not anything I have to do. It just has, like a nice, rounded top, so it doesn't look like there was an air bubble there anymore. Once the resin is in place, I grabbed my UV light and hold it over for a minute toe. Let it cure and harden. So I just want to talk a little bit about UV resin because it is quite different than the two part epoxy. The advantages to you. The reason is how fast it is secure. And that's why I like to use it to fix these tiny little mistakes, because I can cure them really quickly, not have to worry about the resin falling to the sides it stays where it needs to be. Because of the time frame, you don't have to mix it. It comes straight out of the bottle, and, um, it's just easy to use When in these situations, however, the cons are that it has a shorter shelf life. It is a lot more expensive than the two part epoxy resin. Um, you can only use very, very thin layers. The other reason you'll have to use thin layers, but this one is needs to be a thinner, and you will need the special lamp. But not only that, if you're using a mold, it will only cure in a clear silicone mold, because the UV light has to get through there. So if I were to make, um, one of these items, I know the Cuba's in a Sceviour mold, but the larger one I would never use you here is, and for that it would take a long time, would be very expensive. You have to do very, very thin layers and may not cure properly because the mold was purple in my cure on the top. But then you might not get the sides cured as well because of the color of the mold and especially here, our mold that is fully encompassing. So that's why I use UV reason for much smaller projects like these fixes. And, um, maybe if you wanted to do a very small, clear mold like, for instance, those dice, if you had a clear silicone mold those air small items so you would just do multiple layers to get it to fill the hole item, but just something to consider. I use it just to fix things. I don't use it as my main source of resin. 12. The Results: So to wrap this up, I'm going to show you the finished pieces out of the molds and fix it up. As you can see, this one on the back looks great. The coat is really glossy and covered up any issues, and it looks perfect. However, on the other side, because the resin dripped over the cup got stuck to it. I could pry that off, sand it down, do another layer on the top and it would look perfect. So it is salvageable. This one didn't require any fixing. It came out of the mold without any air bubbles along the sides. So it looks really great. I just sanded the bottoms down so the edges would be less sharp. And then I have the sphere, which turned out really nice. Um, I got it back to the glossy finish. I got rid of the seem and any of the weird imperfections. However, the flower did change color. I have found this with roses. Ah, this one, as you can see, is I don't know what type of fire this is, but it's kind of like a rose, and the color didn't change without one at all, and you can see the top domed over nicely with that other layer. I did, um, for the flower spear. I did add a little laser cut stand that I made so I could display it. But I still need to figure out why these roses change color because it's the only one that has changed color out of all of the different types of flowers that I've preserved. I've tried flowers like Dalio's and some flowers, and they've all looked really nice in resin, so I encourage you to try different flowers. The only one that I still have to figure out is the Rose. These are some examples of the first time I tried this, and as you can see, there's a way more micro air bubbles within the resin piece itself. So with time you will get better. Don't be discouraged if years has a lot of air bubbles. Just keep on trying. I will leave some tips for air bubbles in the pdf that you download, but as you can see, these flowers look beautiful even after a time has passed by 13. Wrap Up: So I hope you enjoyed the horse, and I hope you learned some things. I did make a few mess ups, but sometimes that happens. I hope that I was able to explain to you why that happened and how you can avoid it. Resin can be tricky, so it just takes some practice. Make sure to be safe and check out all the precautions I recommended. And there's also a pdf that you can download with this course that gives you some more tips on bubbles and where you can look for information. So make sure to download that. If you have any questions, you can check their. But if you have questions after checking their feel free to ask, I'm happy to do my best answer.