I recently completed another matchbox swap at Craftster and this time I decided to try using resin. I have been wanting to experiment with this for a while, but never seemed to have a good enough reason invest in the resin.
I actually ended up using Quick Water which I found at Michael’s. As I was working on such a small scale this product seemed to fit the bill and was more cost affective as well.
It allowed me to mix up a small quantity and the drying time is fairly fast (or at least I was supposed to be.) This may have been user error, I am not really sure, however, the end result was satisfactory.
My first challenge was to find a container that would be the right size for the matchbox swap parameters. The boxes are the 32 count wooden stick matches and the box is 2 1/8” x 1 /8” x 1/2”. I lucked out when my daughter, Amanda of SnazzleCraft came home with the best storage boxes EVER! She found these interlocking organizers in the jewelry section at Hobby Lobby.
Next was to create the salt water fish which would be suspended inside. I made these out of shrinky dink material. The mermaid on a rock came from an old gumball machine and I mean OLD! She is probably from the early 1980’s.
The aquarium plants were a combination of plastic and real dried plants which I coated with fixative before submersion.
The final touch was to create the curious kitty. She had to be an orange tabby as my partner in the swap has an orange tabby cat. The kitty was made of Sculpey and the details painted on after baking then also sprayed with fixative.
The only thing I had to figure out was how to get the tacky feel off the surface of the quick water and I accomplished that with a coat of Sally Hanson’s Hard As Nails clear top coat.
I had such fun with this I am already thinking up other projects.
