Going Postal

I do occassionally redeliver letters to the right address on my way to work; but now I'm getting doorstepped parcels. Three in a week. One left with a neighbour, but the other two left wedged under the door knocker; so suspended 2/3 of the way up on the front door of the flat. Once again, I'm told that such complaints are taken very seriously - and that they handle a large volume of mail, such incidents make up a very small proportion of the total mail handling capacity. Well, thank you. That makes me so relived to know I'm taking one for the team in being the constant crappy outlier in your vast data set.

However, I did get back in one day last week to find a lovely package on my door mat. The nice thing about ordering art supplies is that, for someone like me who works in miniture most of the time, they are small. Small fits through the gap in door most of the time - sometimes not it seems; but that's a whole different rant.

I have these, which was pretty impressive given I only ordered them a few days ago. Since my last resin project, I've been looking for receptacles like these for ages.



As much as I like the resin moulds from the evil PMC website (more of that to come later once the burns heal), sanding things is one of my least favorite jobs, so anything I can do to avoid that is a good thing. In addition, one of the things I worry about with steampunk art is how sharp it can be. I lose count of the number of times I've inserted small cogs under my fingernails or into my top layer of skin by accident. If I ever got abducted by aliens, they'd think I was manufactured in Switzerland.



I spend hours painstakingly flatting parts so they are smooth and sanding off rough edges, coating things in varnish and adding backs so they don't catch on things. So that's another reason these sorts of settings, little glass vials and tiny boxes appeal. They help stop the sharpness.

This is crystal resin; I've had it ages and the packet basically consist of two bottles of stuff that will remove the top layer of your skin. They get mixed two parts resin (big bottle) with one parts hardener (little bottle) to create a mixture that also burns.



It's been a while since I last got the resin out, but this time I'm armed with some graduated plastic dropping pipettes and a set of disposable shot glasses; which hopefully should make the combining part a little bit easier.



I can spend ages fiddling about with cogs and bits, so I've just selected out some parts that will fit into my setting.



Just before I start arranging things, I'm going to add a little bit of resin intothe bottom of the setting - this really is to stop things sliding about as I place them and also to make sure that there isn't any air bubbles underneath the cogs.



Staring to place objects...



adding more resin to cover them..



Resin doesn't dry that fast, so after 24 hours, it was solid enough to handle without it dribbling liquid burn juice all over my fingers.



And that's it. I will probably hang this on a black or scarlet ribbon rather than a chain, as it sort of fits in a bit more with the V&A meets Rocky Horror theme of these sorts of pieces. Only another two kilos of watch parts to go if you have any ideas!