Beaducation Staff Resin and Diamond Glaze Projects & Tips

On Beaducation Design Day, some of the staff sat down and worked with our new products ICE Resin and Diamond Glaze. Below are some of the results and some tips and tricks that we learned along the way. Some of the blanks we used are sold in our Shoppe and some were samples we were testing out for this project.

Tips on Resin

• Resin is perfect for bezels that are deep. The resin has a magnifying effect on the image after it is cured.
• After mixing, let the resin sit in the mixing cup for 5-10 minutes. All of the bubbles will rise to the surface and disappear. Place the mixed resin under a lamp for a few minutes. The slight heat will help the bubbles disappear faster.
• If the resin settles while curing, a second pouring of resin (just a few drops, usually) will dome the surface.
• Resin can be used with our flat, plated blanks, but extreme caution and a steady hand is required to pour just a bit of resin at a time into the blank. It is really easy to overpour on these blanks and have the resin overflow.

Tips on Diamond Glaze

• Diamond Glaze works great for the flat metal plated bezels.
• Use the glaze in layers rather than trying to cover the image with one big “puddle” of glaze.
• The glaze does add dimension to the piece but does not dome like resin.
• The glaze makes the image waterproof, but avoid getting the piece wet.

Both the Resin and Diamond Glaze permanently adhere to the metal when dry. Once the piece is dry it is impossible to remove the product from the bezel.

Purchase the following items used in this tip:
Diamond Glaze »
ICE Resin »

In the square bird pendant, Danelle used stickers. She did not seal the images, as the sticker coating made them “resin-proof”. Danelle layered the sparrow on top using a button to raise the image up and make it dimensional. The three small round pendants are coated with Diamond Glaze. The yellow image at the bottom is a transparency and is set on our sterling silver blank, so the silver shines through. Kate made a collage image by coating the lady picture and gluing to the bezel. Then she added the “K” sticker and a button. The button caused a few bubbles that she popped with a pin before letting the piece set to cure. The bird pendant is covered in Diamond Glaze. She used about 4 layers of glaze, letting each layer dry completely before adding the next. You may notice a few bubbles in the glaze. Make sure to remove those from each layer before you let the piece dry. Kriss used scrapbook paper over blanks coated with Diamond Glaze for the Cherry and Bird pendants. You can see that on the Owl and pink bird pendant there was a little staining of the paper. Kriss coated the paper with glue, but it might not have been super-dry when she applied it to the blank. The flower pendant is resin in a sterling silver bezel. The image was cut out and glued to the base, letting the sterling shine through. The resin has a magnifying effect on the flower. Lisa made this cute resin pendant using a black and white printout of a photo and sealed the image with glue. Check the piece after curing to see if the resin has filled the piece. You can see in the upper left-hand corner that a bit more resin could be poured in the bezel to make the surface dome. Also, make sure that the image gets glued down before the resin is poured, especially with a large image like this one. You can see where the image lifted slightly on the right corner. Stephanie’s projects were inspired by Spring! In the large, square pendant she used scrapbook paper sealed with white glue. You can see a bit of “staining” on the paper on the right edge where the resin leaked through the seal. To avoid this, make sure that you seal the paper thoroughly with two coats of glue, paying special attention to the edges. Though if you don’t know that the resin bled, you really wouldn’t notice. Notice how perfectly Steph domed the resin in this flat pendant. That is the result of really CAREFUL pouring! On the round initial pendants, Steph layered in resin about halfway in the pendant and let it cure. She followed up by adding the initials and pouring the top layer to fill the bezel. The last piece is the clear Diamond Glaze directly layered over the blank.