Steampunk crafts

Steampunk crafts with resin

I have always had a fascination with Steampunk jewelry.  I love how something so mechanical and industrial could be transferred into a delicate piece of jewelry.  In going through some of my flea market finds, I decided to pull apart some of the watches and steal the gears for this project.

Note:  If you want the ‘really interesting’ gears and such, you will need to find watches that run by winding them, not by batteries.  Either that or purchase steampunk parts that are ready to go.

While I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do, I knew I wanted to create a casting where I could do it in several layers to create a lot of interest and depth in the piece.  For this project, I’m using a 2.5 cm diameter cube mold.

Before you ever pour the resin, there are a few steps you need to take:

Step 1

Measure the mold and figure out the volume it can hold.

Once you have mold measurements, you need to figure out how much resin you need.  In this case, the math is straightforward.

2.5 cm x 2.5 cm x 2.5 cm = 15.625 cubic centimeters.   A cubic centimeter is equal to a milliliter, so the entire mold holds a smidge more than 15 mL.

Step 2

You need to plan how you are going to place your pieces in the mold.  I wanted to do layers to give a dimensional effect to my cube.  As such, I started with the large pieces in the back, smaller pieces in the front.

Layer 1

I mixed a batch of Resin Obsession super clear resin for the first layer of the mold.  Since I knew I wanted 4 layers, I divided the 15.625 (okay, let’s just call it 16) by 4 to see that I needed 4 ml in each layer.  The first layer was only resin.

Layer 2

For the next layer, I added the large watch face.  By dipping it in resin first, I avoided trapping bubbles underneath.

Pro tip:  If you pour subsequent layers when the previous layer is in the gel phase, you will minimize the lines between layers.

Layers 3 and 4

I repeated the layers, adding in smaller gears and watch hands each time.

Because resin shrinks a little as it cures, I very carefully overfilled the mold.  I would rather sand off extra in this case rather than have a divot to deal with.

Allow to fully cure before demolding.

Demolding

To demold, peel the silicone away from the casting.  Pouring a little bit of soapy water in the mold also helps with demolding.

Finished cube

I love how this looks from the front/top.  I can see the watch parts along with it have a three-dimensional look.

While pouring the next layer while the previous layer was gelled helped to minimize the lines, I underestimated the amount of resin in each layer, so my last layer was thicker than the rest.  Darn it.

To finish this steampunk crafts project, I could attach a silver plated bead cap with more mixed resin, then hang it from a chain.  It could be cute keychain fob or even a light pull.  I could also use this cube for a large knob pull as well.

Watch the video on how I made this steampunk crafts DIY:

Unpublished Blog Posts of Resin Obsession, LLC © 2018 Resin Obsession, LLC