Experments - March 9, 2026

I have developed a burning desire to transfer laser-printed images to air-dry clay.  Yesterday, I spent the whole day trying (without success) to do it.

There are several video tutorials about transferring INKJET-printed images to air-dry clay.  Until about two weeks ago, I had an inkjet printer, but Son #2 came over to print something, I gave him the printer since The Husband bought us a new laser printer.  It is not so easy to transfer a laser printer image to air-dry clay.  

I tried all sorts of transfer agents:  water, alcohol, nail polish remover.  Nothing worked.  I'd even bought some printable vinyl sheets, thinking the image might slip off easier than it would on paper.  Nope.  

Supposedly, laser print will slip off the slick side of address label/sticker paper, but I haven't got any.

Anyway, this morning I took one of the images that I'd printed on a vinyl sheet, and instead of trying to transfer the image to clay, I put it in a backless bezel frame and filled the bezel with UV resin.  We'll see how this works.  It will need to be backed with something.  

* * * * * * * * 

After almost a whole week of crawling around on my hands and knees, shining a flashlight in dark places, and turning furniture upside-down, I finally found my bail pliers:

They were right there, sticking up in plain view the whole time.  

Rerouting - March 5, 2026

Tuesday morning, I found a jewelry tutorial I wanted to try.  It was, essentially, four identical heart-shaped pieces, locked together in a circle with wire wraps and beads to become a pendant.  Here's what I started out to make:  Wire wrapped flower pendant | Beaded wire pendent

Here's what came out:

Look at that janky thing.  I bent the hearts to hell and back while I was trying to wrap them (a common occurrence for me), and the swirls were not uniform.  

Wednesday morning, I started over.  The second attempt was better - I didn't bend the hearts too much - but before I got halfway through it, I knew I'd have to do it over AGAIN.  

I sat down and made a LOAD of the individual heart components, determined to be more precise.  The swirls got better.  The third attempt produced what might turn out to be "a keeper":

Today, I played with that bowl of spiral-y hearts to see what other configurations I could come up with.   If you bend the hearts a little more than 90 degrees, you can connect more than 4 of them for something other than a square.  Five hearts can make a hexagon.  Six can make a circle.  Any of those configurations come out a little "wiggly"/flexible.  

  

I might have gotten more accomplished this week had I not misplaced my bail pliers.  Been looking for them since Monday.  

  

Driving Nanny - March 3, 2026

Saturday afternoon, as I was on the back porch, twisting wire for jewelry, Nanny came sauntering around the corner.  She'd come to ask if I would drive her to her eye doctor appointment on Monday.  I agreed, and we agreed on a departure time.  Yesterday morning, I picked her up at 10:15 for her noon appointment.  It was a long drive.

Nanny doesn't get much opportunity to talk to people, outside of churches, funeral homes, and grocery stores, and she had a fresh story to relate about something that had happened after church the previous day.  She started the story as we started down her driveway on the way to the doctor.

As Nanny and another lady were leaving the building (they and the minister were the last to leave), they encountered an Hispanic lady in the church parking lot.  Her tire had gone flat.  She wasn't very fluent in English.  Grandsons had to be called in to get lug nuts off.  Nanny ended up driving the lady and her tire to a tire repair place.  While they waited for the fix, the lady took Nanny to lunch.    But the lady was able to drive away on a good tire.

We'd been on the road close to an hour by the time Nanny got to the part where she got home.  We'd taken detours up family trees and down gravel roads her father had paved when he worked for the WPA in nineteen and thirty-five.  I learned why the helpful grandson was living with his grandmother, how old he is, and where he works.

I just drove. . . . 

On the heels of that story came news of cousin Duffy, who was in a rehab/nursing home in the same town.  That one was a good ten-minutes leading up to the request:  Could we stop to see about him after the doctor's appointment and after lunch at the all-you-can-eat buffet?  The visit wouldn't take long.

(Lord Jesus . . . .)

Sure, why not.  

My brain was numb by the time I got home, close to four o'clock.

My BFF called about suppertime, just as The Husband got home from work.  I had her on speaker phone as he came out to the porch, telling her about my day with Nanny, and how I learned more than I wanted to know about some townsfolk in a story that was technically about a lady with a flat tire.

My BFF said, "We do the same thing."

I said, "I know."

And The Husband just laughed and laughed.

I am shamelessly planning another craft store run this morning.  Might even hit a dollar store or two for treasures I don't yet know I need.  ;)

I had a few successes in the craft room yesterday, but lost points on one of them late in the day.

Several years ago, The Husband "inherited" a box full of old piano sheet music.  For some reason, there was a trumpet practice book among the sheets.  The pages are yellowed, and there are some interesting terms among them.  I had the idea to make a resin pendant with a treble clef and key signature in it.

I poured a clear, tear-drop shaped cabochon, about 1" x .75".  Poured it almost full and cured it.  Check.

The printed treble clefs were just big enough to fill that space.  Cutting them out to the perfect size/shape was hard.  Since the plan was to make more than one (if I could get the process right), I didn't want to fool with scissors, so I traced around the cabochon, scanned it with the cutting machine, and jimmied around with the size until I got it just right.  Stuck the music to my cutting board, et voila!  

It then occurred to me that I could use that same scan to cut all sorts of things to go under that cabochon.  I forgot about the treble clef for a minute and cut out some glitter vinyl that would fit it.  I added a drop or two of resin to the cured cabochon (still in the mold), put the vinyl on top of it, and filled the mold the rest of the way.  It worked perfectly! 

Had to pour a new cabochon for the treble clef.  Among my resin stash was a small bottle of transparent brown resin.  It's just faintly brown.  I used it for the cabochon.  

The paper treble clef needed to be sealed (two coats, on both sides, with white glue that dries clear) before going in the resin.  The online advice was to let it dry for several hours before putting it in resin.  I might have rushed it, but when it felt dry to me, I used it. 

The experiment came out okay.  Wasn't crazy about the brown resin, but the cabochon is usable as a pendant. 

After that, I moved on to making rings out of wire.  Turned out 3 rings, two of which turned out okay.  

When The Husband came home from work, I took him to the craft room to show him my accomplishments.   

I could not find the treble clef cabochon anywhere.

Hermie's back! 

Gumption - February 24, 2026

It's too cold to be on the porch this morning.  I won't be here long.

Trying to work up the gumption to work on some jewelry today.  I hurt my knee yesterday - just leaned a little sideways to reach for something, and POP!  It's a teenage injury that flares up now and then.  My knee is swollen and "loose," but it doesn't hurt much as long as I keep it moving.  When I get up after sitting a while, those first few steps are a bitch.

The tiny flowers that have been sitting in silica powder since the weekend have dried nicely.  The forsythia maintained its color much better than they did when I used the silica microwave method.  I found a few dandelions this morning, and one little purple bloom (don't know what it is).  The cold snap seems to have made everything hold off blooming for a minute.

Since yesterday, I have made 5 bracelets.  Every one of them has something wrong with it.  :-/

I'm going to keep trying until I get it right.

Drying buds - February 28, 20276

In case you're wondering what caused a lapse in the near-daily reporting of my yawn-worthy doings, don't worry.  I've just been busy making messes, wasting wire and resin, and fuming over failed attempts.  

The Grandson moved in with us a little over a week ago.  Trouble with mom, apparently.  I've been expecting this ever since he graduated from high school and turned 18.  He's a good kid.  I'm glad he turned to us.  He's welcome here.

Son #2 and his family went to Texas over the weekend so that Granddaughter #3 could participate in a gymnastics competition, leaving Roscoe and Duffy (the cat) home alone.  Because I referred to Roscoe as an asshole the last time we were asked to tend to him, they did not ask us to see after him this time, but when I saw the other grandparents tending to the animals, I volunteered us for the job since we live just across the road.  Roscoe was not so much of an asshole this time - we didn't have much trouble getting him to go back inside after his potty breaks - but he did shut himself and Duffy in the laundry room between visits.  We do not know why they were both in the laundry room at the same time, but we know Roscoe was responsible for the door being shut; the room is not very big, and he's got a huge turning radius.  When The Husband went over to check on them, he found them in the laundry room.  There were washing powders all over the floor, and Duffy was on a high shelf above the machines.  I figure he's responsible for spilling the washing powders.  Nothing was amiss when I went over at 7 this morning to let Roscoe out.  Duffy shot out the door when I held it open for Roscoe.  Duffy has all of his claws (he needs them in a house with four dogs) and I worried that he'd shoot up a tree and not come down.  Roscoe wouldn't let him off the porch, though, so I didn't have much trouble catching him and tossing his fat butt back in the house.  While Roscoe did his business, I filled their water and food bowls, and when Roscoe came in and went to his food bowl, I escaped.  He was raising cain about it when I left.  The kids will be home today, so our job is about done.

I am still playing with wire, resin, and clay, intending to make jewelry with it.  I've wasted a lot of materials trying to learn the skills.  About 10% of what I produce comes out mostly right.  And I don't even know what I'll do with it all, except give it away. 

But, hey . . . it keeps me off the streets.  ;)

Tiny blooms are beginning to appear around the yard.  Yesterday, I picked henbit and forsythia and some tiny white blooms I can't name.  I want to dry some to put inside resin.  I'm drying them in silica powder.  This powder had a 2-minute microwave option, and I tried it, but the tiniest things turned to dust, and the forsythia came out ochre instead of yellow.  Ther's another round of the same flowers buried in silica powder in an airtight container.  This method is supposed to take several days to work.  Since the blossoms I used are so small, I will check them tomorrow.

 

UV Resin Adventures - February 10, 2026

See all those lumps?  They're (mostly failed) resin cabochons and pendants that would not cure under my UV lamp, so I brought them out to the porch to soak up some sun.  They've been out here for a couple of days, and some of them still feel a little sticky.  Only a few of them are worthy of becoming jewelry.  I guess the rest could be used for things like decorating outdoor pots (which I will probably never do).  Some of them are a little sunken on the back side, but hot glue might fill the gap enough to stick them to something. 

I am growing frustrated with being unable to achieve the results I want.  

My curing problems likely stem from the things I've used to color the resin - alcohol inks, pigment inks, mica powders, glitter, glitter flakes, etc.  They block the UV light, and the more colorants you add, the less the light gets through.  My pitiful little UV lamp only works for a maximum of 1 minute at a time, which means it must be re-started multiple times to achieve much of a cure, even with un-tinted resin.  I don't know if the short interruptions of light make much difference to the curing process.  

The sun works better.

I have some concern about the resin, itself - all resins, not just the UV stuff.  I am scatter-brained, and at first I did not always remember to put on gloves before messing with the resin.  For a few days, my fingertips wore residue.  The resin instructions do not say to wear a mask, so I haven't been wearing one.  Yesterday, as I was scouring the internet for resin tips, I ran across a UV resin video featuring a myth-buster guy and two resin professionals, and I thought, "Oh, boy!  I'm going to get some real info this time!"  The first thing they did when they prepared to cure some resin was to put on respirators.

Respirators.  Not just masks.

Further research indicates that the fumes from resin while it is curing are toxic.

I may have to re-think the whole idea of resin jewelry.  

But there are 8 full bottles of resin in the "studio," and boxes full of colorants.  Maybe I can use them on the porch before the spring pollen storm.