The rhythm of my heart

I have been having fantastic fun with these heart shaped bezels and resin, so I thought I'd try out mounting something other than watch parts.

This is an old copy of a depressing piece of choral music that I retrieved from a room being cleared out at work. I'm normally a bit funny about cutting up things like this, but as it damaged beyond repair and destined for the recycling, I don't feel too bad about it.



I can cut out a shape to fit my bezel using a craft knife and trim the edges in so it fits.



One thing I found out the hard way is that resin eats paper. It makes it go transparent. One way of stopping this is to give the piece to be set a quick coat of PVA glue before applying the coat of resin.



In this case, I've left a few spots clear of glue because I want to make the paper look older but I've coated most of the surface. As I don't want to see the bezel underneath, there are actually three paper heart shapes underneath this one, so even when it does go transparent I should see faded ageing paper rather than shiny silver.

These bezels take about 3 mL of resin, so I'm only making up a small volume here.



Applying the resin and resisting the urge to poke it for what seems like an eternity and you get this. The one on the left has three layers of paper and looks much older than the one on the right - which just has one and has been fully sealed.



This screams gothic to me, so I'm just finishing it of with some dark ribbons and a Czech glass bead to add a bit of sparkle.



Huge thank you to Angela for feeding my new found craft obsession! - her Folksy shop A Bead Cornucopia is here, and she has lots of these wonderfully deep settings in different shapes.