The joys of warm resin!

A long time ago, when I was younger and still looking for my place in the world, I attempted to fit in at the local card and comic book shop. Square peg, round hole. There was definitely some "Oh my gods and overlords, there's a girl in the card shop FLAVEN!" going on. I played Magic the Gathering, not well, but I tried.

I was enamored by the black cards. They had rats. I liked rats. Apparently, the mono-black card scheme that I played exclusively had its limitations. I was not good at Magic. Perhaps my deck just wasn't good.

I begrudgingly sold my cards, and moved on with my life.

While packing for my move last year, I found a few packs of cards that had not made the journey to the card shop. Well, they weren't worth anything, and they didn't take up much room, so I kept them.

I had a hankering the other day to create some resin cabs for my bead work. Those cards sure had some pretty pictures on them...Thats right nerds! I have defiled several magic cards! Mwahahahaa! Really, they were just 4 basic lands, swamps...not foreign, foil, or rare, its cool, don't light sabre me...but if I ever find a beta black lotus, I will SO make a cab out of it, out of spite! HA!

So out came my 2 part resin, popsicle sticks, cups, etc, and I startd my adventure. I poured the entire cab with one go, with room temperature resin. BIG MISTAKE(S)
The bubbles completely obscure the images. The top 2 are from Magic Cards, the bottom are a couple acrylic flowers I got on clearance at Pat Catans a week or so ago.

Crap...So I started over. I warmed my resin bottles in warm-hot water, until they were warm to the touch. I swirled the products around in the bottles, then warmed a touch longer.

Then I mixed slowly and carefully, avoiding bubbles at all cost. I only filled the selected molds halfway, let cure, then filled the rest of the way, and carefully placed my cutouts, trying to remove all bubbles as I went. Much better eh?

This is a photo of the flower cab against the light. They flowers take on a true sublety that I really kinda dig.

I think my next resin adventure with Magic Cards will be a Power Nine tile-style bracelet.