Alcohol Ink Dangle Earrings

I wanted to try making some transparent earrings using alcohol ink. I had a play around, and this is what I came up with!

Required:

• clear plastic sheet that's not too bendy: I used the packaging sleeve from a makeup palette. Acrylic offcuts should work great too, or something like an overhead projector transparency
• alcohol inks. I used yellow, green and blue inks, so I wouldn't end up with any muddy browns when they mixed
• scissors
• doming resin, or another viscous resin that won't run off a surface
• resin mixing equipment + scales if measuring by weight
• rubber or nitrile gloves
• pin vice or other drill
• dust mask
• earring findings: I used surgical steel ear wires, six medium sized jump rings, and four small
• pliers

Optional:

• glitter, gilding flakes or other inclusions: I used gold mica flakes
• sandpaper to make the edges less sharp
• respirator mask if you're worried about fumes
• rubbing alcohol
• heat gun to speed up the alcohol ink drying
• silicone doming mat

The fun bit starts straight away. I gave my clear plastic a quick wipe with rubbing alcohol, then once that dried I started dotting alcohol ink randomly over the surface. I angled the plastic to let it run all over, and used the heat gun both to move the ink and to make it dry faster. I repeated adding more ink and moving it around until I'd covered most of the sheet, leaving some clear areas.

Don't worry if it doesn't look like much yet - once we've started cutting it up and adding the resin it'll look great. If you *really* don't like it, then clean the ink off with rubbing alcohol and start again.

I let all the ink dry, then cut my sheet into randomly sized triangles. You can cut whatever shapes you like, or experiment with shaped hole punches or use a scalpel. I would steer clear of anything too intricate, especially if you're new to resin, as it will be easier to corral your resin into covering (and not overflowing off of) a simpler solid shape.

I put all my triangles on a silicone doming mat: this helps you keep the resin on the surface you're supposed to be covering, but if you don't have one then improvise. Resin doesn't stick to wax paper, and you can raise your shapes up using blu tak or small objects.

I wanted to add a little sparkle, so I tweezered some gold mica flakes onto my triangles. I placed them randomly, and I knew the resin would move them around a bit, so don't worry too much about getting them perfect.

Put your gloves on! I warmed part A of my resin in hot water for five minutes, then weighed it with part B into a silicone cup. I used 7.5g resin total for the first side of the earrings.

Stir your resin as slowly as you can stand, until it's all mixed. Slower stirring equals less bubbles: I also like to give it a blast or two with the heat gun, which thins it down temporarily, mixes it more, and pops some of the bubbles. Then I give it a few more mixes with my silicone mixing stick.

This bit takes some patience. I used my mixing stick to drop a blob of resin onto one triangle, and encouraged it to the edges using the stick again (toothpicks are useful here too). I slowly added small drops of resin til the triangle was covered with a nice domed shape. I did this with all my triangles.

I really recommend using an implement to transfer the resin rather than just pouring from the cup: it's much easier to prevent overspilling this way.

I left my resin to cure for 24 hours using my winter curing setup: it's a clean upturned plastic tray with a brewing belt (used to keep the temperature up in homebrewing) wrapped around it. Resin cures better when it's warm (the bottle will likely give you an optimum curing range to work with), so plan ahead if it's cold where you are.

I flipped all my triangles over (discarding a couple I wasn't so keen on), then added a few more mica flakes so there was sparkle on both sides. Then I mixed my resin, coated my triangles, and left for another 24 hours under my heating setup.

Aside: I do my best not to waste resin, so I keep a few other projects close by to use up any excess. Here I've used the leftover resin to put a second protective coat on some heart shapes, and also used it to glue stud backs onto some earrings I cast a while ago.

Once the other side had cured, I picked out my four favourite shapes, pairing them up so they'd have about the same height in the end.

I decided the corners were a little sharp, so I gave them a tiny snip with some scissors, then put my dust mask on and sanded them a little.

I then drilled two holes in each top triangle, and one in the bottom. I used a pin vice, which is good for the occasional hole, but at some point I'd like to get a Dremel-style multi tool, which should be better for quick but detailed work. I protected my work surface with a bit of scrap leather: wood or a stack of scrap paper would work for this too

I did a bit of experimenting at this stage: I originally tried just four jump rings, but I didn't get the amount of motion out of the bottom triangles that I'd hoped for. So I ended up with ear wire - small jump ring - medium jump ring - triangle - medium jump ring - small jump ring - medium jump ring. This gave me all the triangles aligned forwards, with lots of movement.

I was feeling lazy so didn't solder my jump rings, and therefore declared myself done!