Today, I’m sharing a number of poly gem stones developed earlier this week. As I described in my initial post on this subject last week (check out the post here), I wanted to create poly gems with an enamel finish. My early experiments found that the temperatures needed to accommodate both polymer and enamel are crucial to the finish. The enamel needs a slightly higher temperature to completely melt the enamel powder. This puts the polymer at risk of burning, so the time exposed to the higher temperature needs to be managed carefully. I’ve tried applying the enamel both before and after curing the polymer. I think, applying the enamel onto pre cured polymer has worked best for me. I used my curing oven for the stones in my photo story. The first experiments were ‘cooked’ in my Efcolor stove (check out the stove here) and I managed to burn the polymer - several times.
The final experiment worked quite well in terms of time and temperature, so the stones are there and ready to be turned into gems for bezel cups.
I’m ready to make the bezel cups today. The poly gems are all slightly different shapes and sizes - the first bezel cups will be those for the largest stones and will form part of a ring. I’ll make a couple of cups (to start with) and see how things turn out. Watch this space for progress.
Thanks for calling in today.
No comments:
Post a Comment