I don’t know why I never thought to look on YouTube for resin videos before. There are several of them and I really liked this one for the basics on mixing:

Plus, I learned a little trick from this nice lady, which is to use cooking spray to clean your cups so you can re-use them!

What a disappointment I must be to people who end up here because they thought this was a crafting blog. What is this blog? Who the hell does this lying bitch think she is?


1. I love crafts. I sew, I make jewelry, I make buttons, I play with polymer clay, I play with resin, I decoupage, I paint, I need help.

2. This started out as a personal blog to keep in contact with friends and family. I chose the name CraftZombie because I have a bad habit of staying awake until the sun comes up. I lose track of time while crafting. This happens almost every single night. I could have named this blog CraftyNightOwlBitchWontGoToSleep. (By the way, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.)

3. I intended on making it more crafty, but still personal.

4. I intended to do crafty video tutorials on all kinds of topics.

5. I’m just too damn busy and I hate it. I never reached my blog goals.

So, in a pathetic effort to be crafty and helpful, I am going to give some resin advice.

I use http://www.statcounter.com to see what search terms people use to get to this blog. One recent Google.au search was for “how to avoid bubbles in easycast resin”. Here we go….

You can’t avoid bubbles in Easy Cast resin, or any other resin for that matter. It is a natural occurrence that happens during the mixing phase. You cannot get around it. But you CAN get rid of most of the bubbles, sometimes even all of them if it is your lucky day. How? Warm air. If you are broke, you will use method #1. If you have a few bucks, you will use method #2. Do not attempt method #3, it sucks.

1. blow air through a straw
2. use a heat gun (embossing gun)
3. use a blowdryer

Don’t attempt to use a blowdryer. I learned this lesson long ago when I first began my resin journey. Blowdryers BLOW air. You will splatter resin everywhere. I only mentioned it because I thought you might try to be sneaky after you read this, thinking “I already have a blowdryer. I don’t wanna buy a heat gun. I’ll just use my blowdryer.” If you use your blowdryer, I will knock on your door and slap you in the face. I will. And if you are a seasoned resin artist and you leave me a comment about how you use your blowdryer, I will also slap you in the face.

Blowing air with a straw is not as effective as the heat gun. The heat gun zaps them in a snap. It’s almost magical to watch. Most of the time you can get all of the bubbles. Sometimes there will be one stray bubble that shows up out of nowhere during your curing process and you just have no choice but to embrace it or throw the finished piece in the trash. You end up convincing yourself that it gives your piece “character”. But deep down, you really hate that fucking bubble.

How close do you hold the heat gun to the resin? You can actually get it pretty close. Just start off a little far away and slowly get closer. You start seeing bubbles popping. The closer you get, the more bubbles pop. But you don’t want to leave the heat gun on the resin for a long time because too much heat can cause problems. So can cold resin.

How much is this freakin’ heat gun thing? The cheapest ones I’ve seen retail for $19.99. I got mine for 40% off with a coupon. That was cheap enough for me, but maybe not for some. Steal a straw and start blowin’.

Oh, and don’t be afraid of resin. I remember how afraid I was the first time I unscrewed the caps, like I was a mad scientist and my kitchen was going to explode. Resin is your friend. Just follow its rules and it will treat you kindly. You can blow up your kitchen with something else.

Any questions?

P.S. Yes, blowdryer is not one word, its two.

Update 6/10/2010: Found a great tutorial for resin crafts here

Here I was, all excited when Netflix announced that Watch Instantly was now unlimited, but of course there was a problem. The same problem I had before. When I tried to use Watch Instantly, I was greeted with a message that I needed to install an update to Windows Media Player 11. Okay, no problem!

PROBLEM!
Windows Media Player 11 gives me a little message during installation that says I cannot proceed because my OS is not supported. I have Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004. Edition 2002 is of course not supported either. My computer is 4 years old. A dinosaur? Not in my mind, but I guess in the minds of Microsoft? So off to Google I go looking for a solution. I found an HP Support thread (I have a Dell) where some people were discussing this issue. I threw in my two cents and checked the little box to be notified of replies. Its my lucky day because someone replied with this solution (which works!!!):

1) download Media Player 11 exe (installwmp11.exe) to a folder
2) Install 7-Zip from http://www.7-zip.org/
3) Run 7-Zip and have it extract the files from installwmp11.exe into another folder (eg: c:\download\installwmp11)
4) Run C:\download\installwmp11\wmfdist11.exe
5) Run C:\download\installwmp11.exe\wmp11.exe

PLEASE NOTE THAT SOME PEOPLE MAY HAVE ISSUES WITH MEDIA CENTER WORKING PROPERLY AFTER INSTALLING THIS. I myself did not have any problems. I am unable to test the TV section of MC at the moment (my new graphics card has no tv tuner), but the dvd, music, and all other sections worked like normal. Apparently some people have had to uninstall the new WMP if they want to use MC.

So there you have it. I decided to post this in case anyone else was searching for help.

(Update March 14, 2008: For those who have old Media Center PC’s and Watch Instantly is crashing, Hacking Netflix just posted something that might help you.)

6 months ago, I posted some Bamboo Tile Pendants I made with vintage children’s book images:





The traffic to my site because of those has been overwhelming. With the traffic comes “How do I do….” questions, the biggest being “How the heck do you make the little wire thingy on the top?!?!”

So I made a little tutorial and tried the best I could to explain. I am getting a video camera soon and would love to make video tuts for all sorts of things. The camera I have now would be no good for that sort of thing. Feel free to ask me any questions and please bear with my pathetic little “illustrations”.



















See a close-up of this to get a better idea: