During the week I had a delivery of some mica powders and an infra-red temperature gauge. Mica is the fine coloured dust that is the base for a number of coloured items – such as the make-up powders I’ve used previously with limited success.
I bought a variety of metallics and used two of them to create this great chocolate-caramel swirl effect. To do this, you mix your resin as normal, split it off into a couple of containers and add your mica powders. You then have to monitor the temperature with the infra-red gauge until it hits a certain temperature – this means is has thickened up enough to combine the two colours without them blurring together becoming a single coloured mush.
When hardened you turn the pen as normal – in this case I’ve used one of the Stylus pen kits, which has a smartphone/tablet stylus on the top.
Remembrance Pen
I’ve had another attempt at this pen today. After accidentally sanding the picture off last week I realised I’d also sanded the wood down too far at one end and the tube was showing through. There’s no coming back from that, so I had to cut the whole thing off the brass tube and start again.
That’s if I could find the tube….. I’d put it somewhere to one side while I did the Chocolate Caramel pen, and for the life of me couldn’t find it. While looking however, I did find some ring magnets I’d mis-placed and bought more to replace, and a Stylus Pen end that I’d also lost. I should tidy up more 🙂
I eventually found it with the pen kit in a little drawer organiser – the logical place to put it, where I was sure I had looked before…..
It’s now got a Tulip blank on it, turned down and given a gloss coat, and has the transfer back in place. I learned a bit from the project pen with a waterslide transfer, so need to do a little finishing off, give it the final coats and assemble it.
It’s obviously going to be too late for today’s remembrance, but will still make a great demonstrator.
