UV Resin Flower Pin

I've been meaning to have a go with UV dip resin for a while, and finally had a crack at it today. There was quite a learning curve on this one, but I did end up with a cute result. It's a pretty customisable project - I went for heart shaped petals and the gay and trans pride flags as my colours, but there are tons of other possibilities.

1. UV dipping resin (clear)
2. Standard UV resin
3. UV coating resin (I used gloss)
4. very thin wire, I used 0.3mm in silver
5. petal making jig (you could absolutely make your own, or shape the wire freehand/around small household objects like pens/chopsticks etc.)
6. wire cutters
7. UV lamp
8. alcohol ink pens and/or resin pigments
9. glue (I used Bostik contact adhesive)
10. two beads (I used 1x 6:0 green seed bead and 1x 6mm wooden bead)
11. green fabric/ribbon (I used recycled sari silk ribbon yarn)

Wrap a length of wire round your jig to form a petal, and twist the two ends together. Cut the wire, leaving about an inch and a half to work with. Make more petals than you think you'll need!

I started off making larger petals on the biggest part of the jig, then when I got to the next stage realised I'd bitten off more than I could chew. I ended up using 6x 12mm petals and 5x 6mm petals.

This is where things derailed a little. I dipped my large petals into the resin, pulled them out, let the excess drip off... And the film burst. I kept at it with all the large petals I'd made, and most of them turned out looking like I'd made hot glue blobby monstrosities (blobby monstrosities pictured) because I couldn't get them both thin and intact.

So I moved down a size, and that went much better. I dipped one at a time, dripped off some of the excess, and then partially cured each petal using the UV lamp (make sure you put the lid on your pot of resin each time!). Then I set them aside and moved on to the next petal. I then did a full two minute cure on all of them.

So I'd definitely advise starting small with these - the 6mm petals turned out great and were really easy, the 12mm weren't bad. I shall be working up to larger ones when I've honed my skills a little!

I do actually own a lot of different UV resin pigments, but to keep the specialist materials down I mostly used alcohol ink pens to colour my petals. I did a couple of practice ones on my blobby monstrosity petals, before colouring my six larger petals rainbow with a little clear at the base, and the five smaller pale pink, blue, and one clear. I used a blending pen to blur the transition from coloured to clear a little.

I then did a coat of my normal UV resin over the dried ink (make sure you've got the side you coloured on!), and cured. For the trans pride petals I also added first a sparkly layer on the back (the colour was Polarisation Pearl from Padico) and then a layer of white over that. Cure cure cure.

I stuck a dust mask on, and gave the petals a light sanding on both sides. Then, one side at a time, I coated and cured a layer of UV coating resin. We are almost done with the resin. Mostly.

I took my seed bead, and threaded all my trans petals into it. I arranged them as I wanted, before cinching the bead right up to the top, and twisting the wires together.

I didn't have a matching green bead with a larger hole, so I coloured in a plain wooden bead using an alcohol marker. Then I threaded in both the trans set of petals and all the gay ones. Arranged them how I wanted, and twisted all eleven strands of wire together.

I drizzled more of the normal UV resin onto the twisted wires, to secure them. Cured that.

I glazed the wooden bead with coating resin, and cured (you could do this step earlier before assembly, but having the flower as a stand actually works quite well for application and curing).

I measured my stalk against a kirby grip (you could use another style of hair clip, brooch pin or whatever you fancied), and trimmed the wire to around the same length. I then applied glue to the wire, and wrapped it in silk ribbon starting at the flower end. Without cutting the ribbon, I then applied glue to the top of the hair grip and the wire I'd just wrapped, and wrapped the ribbon back up the stem and top half of the grip. I glued the bead to the top circle, and glued the end of the ribbon in place around its base to hide that last bit of metal.

I tweaked the positioning of the petals one more time, and called the project complete!

The dipping resin was definitely less beginner-friendly than I'd anticipated (and very labour intensive), but it was also really good fun. I'll absolutely be doing some more projects with it to improve my skills. I think next time I'll use coloured resin instead of the alcohol pens, but the pens are absolutely a more budget-friendly/versatile option if you don't hoard craft supplies as much as me!)