Experiments with Sugarmice: Deus ex machina

I had a little bit of extra resin left over from my last project, so I thought I'd do more of the same and cast another small object rather than throw it away. The photos for this make were taken at the same time as the ones for the heart pendant, so I apologise in advance if you get an odd sense of deja vu; I promise I'll try something other than a miniture version of scrapheap challenge soon!

The resin moulds I acquired ages ago haven't acually had a great deal of use other than for my first little resin attempt (the one with the angry piranhas), so I thought it might be nice to give them another shot with some of the spare bits. I want to make a keyring out of the finished piece, so I'm just dropping some of the watch parts into the bottom of the shape.

I've chosen a selection of cogs here, rather than the random parts I used in the last pendant. I really like these cogs - I was toying with the idea of making them into a bracelet but they are a teeny weeny bit sharp for that. Actually, that's an understatement. I could arm an entire legion of micro ninjas with them.

I want them to settle in the centre of the heart rather than be evenly dispersed as I think the curvature of the cogs goes well with the curvature of the pendant and I like the slightly disorted effect. This also means I don't have to layer up resin to get them in the middle.

Filling with pre-mixed liquid stress and leaving it to set. It did come out of the mould eventually - I left it 36 hrs before I touched it. I forgot to coat the inside of the mould this time, so I consider myself lucky that it came free.

Sanding off the back... I'm using a tiny toothed wheel here - not sure what it's called, but it seems to bite well into the resin and allows me to shear off the slightly raised edges you get as the resin shrinks slightly when it dries.