Sunday 28 April 2013

Botanical Jewellery

I started making resin jewellery quite a few years ago now. In my first and experimental pieces I cast sweets, candy cake decorations, buttons and pressed flowers in resin. I was, and am still, curious to see what will work and look good captured inside resin.

I continued to use sweets and candy cake sprinkles (100's & 1,000's) as they proved popular as quirky and kitsch jewellery and keyrings. I didn't continue with pressed flowers as I was pressing flowers from my garden and they took way too long to be ready to cast in resin. When I have an idea I want to try in now, not wait a few weeks.

Fast forward a few years to the present day and I was asked to make a necklace with heather cast in a resin pendant. I bought the flowers already pressed online and made the necklace for my customer. I still had some heather left over so made some more pressed flower jewellery. I fell back in love with using real flowers in resin jewellery and bought more, different, flowers and leaves.

Recently I discovered you can press your own flowers in the microwave and they are ready to use almost immediately. I've been raiding my garden to see what will and won't work using this method and cannot wait for summer so I have a greater choice of flowers in my garden.


This pendant has some of the bought heather with blue coloured resin
 


this pendant uses more of the bought heather


this pendant has babies breath (also known as gypsophilia) cast in spring yellow resin


I found this skeleton leaf in my garden

I pressed this snowdrop from my garden and am not completely happy with the result.  I think snowdrops are still a WIP (work in progress)

All these pieces are listed for sale in my Etsy shop

I've started using buttons in resin jewellery again, but I think that will have to wait for a new blogpost

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