UV Resin

Have you heard of UV resin? It really is the latest thing to hit the metal clay world. I first got a chance to try it back in April when I took my advanced class in Japan, and I loved it!

The ring here has a little cup at the top, textured with dots, which I filled with resin colourants. After curing them I then filled the entire cup with crystal clear resin which is slightly domed on the surface. It looks gorgeous - like a crisp clear pond with little gems at the bottom. The entire resin part took all of maybe 20 minutes to complete - that includes getting the bottles out and choosing colours!

I've now, after a lot of research and testing, added a fabulous range of UV resin products to the shop (will be available online shortly), and I'll also be holding a one-day course in working with it.

The UV resin is different from normal resin in that it doesn't smell, doesn't need to mixed to exact quantitites (it doesn't need mixing at all unless you want colours!), and, it cures in minutes rather then hours!

Just like normal resin you can trap things in it. I have so many ideas including stones, dried flowers, feathers, special photos, ticket stubs, crystals, shells and sand..... I just need another week in the studio to play!

The nice thing with this UV resin is that it cures rock hard - there is no sticky surface to it. It comes out completely smooth and shiny. And it can be filed to shape, sanded and highly polished.

I'm doing a demonstration of UV resin at the Art Clay World UK Conference on the 15th September - it'll be fun to share this new technique with other metal clay fans - or should that be fanatics?