Resin-ate

Firstly, I love the song “Resonate” by The Prodigy.

Secondly, I have mentioned I have a bevy of skillsets, so that allows me to make special stuff for book giveaways and suches. For my upcoming book The Harlequin (coming out March 2025, read a super short preview on this post here), I am continuing with page holders because I think they’re nifty and I can be super creative in other methods of art. I could 3D print them (oh how nice ;_;) but I rather go with resin because vIiIIiIiiIIiIBbbezzzzz, lol.

These go to giveaway winners (your best shot is on The Storygraph and I always announce them here and on social media), book reviewers, my team and others.

It helps that I have about 15 years or so experience with resin so I know what I’m doing but also, there’s a lot more options out there than there was 15-ish years ago.

Because of the bane of resin – bubbles.

Lighters, vacuum sealers, mug warmers, all to prevent the bubbles. I’m halfway there to having a near full laboratory, it feels like … and I still have bubbles.

The newest acquistions are handy handheld torch lighters. I usually use my long neck BBQ grill lighter that I have hackneyed to have a taller flame and removed safety/childproof bits (because f#ck fire safety*) but the problem is the whole “flame that burns twice as bright also burns twice as fast” thing – the fuel is gone. It looked like a Rob Zombie show and nooooow, I have no more fuel. I hackneyed it again to make the disposable plastic canister accept more butane …. but it won’t – and it kiiiiiinda doesn’t work without inciting memories of Franz Ferdinand’s song “This Fire”. That’s not good. I’m not trying to turn myself or my cats into a Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial.

So now I have handy, refillable, torch lighters so I can pop surface bubbles (and brulee cream, now!) in the resin.

And still I have microbubbles, which are a pain to work with. It certainly was when I made page holders for The Glassman, which has to be crystal clear. Once I changed resin brands, more bubbles.

Now, time for vaccum sealers. Heat is working but I want zero bubbles and sometimes heat makes the resin cure too fast. And emit hazardous gasses.

When a pour goes awry, that means there are page pressers I can’t give to others as book promo because they don’t look great (to me). I can give them away as b-sides or something but still, that’s material out the door.

Also, as a result of my disorders, I can’t work on the pours a long time, just enough to pour into wherever it has to go and throw it into the drying station.

Now, vaccuum pressure. A bit high-tech but whatever makes for a better pour and I have to chuck less.

The name of the game is to use less time necessary to make stuff, which can be better used writing.

So, I got a resin bubbles vacuum. Currently, it lives up to its promise of taking bubbles out – most of the time. I still have to pop a few but it seems to come out fairly clear. I’m still working on improving my resin casting skills with all this new-fangled tech (which is a lot better than the old alternative of “mix slowly and then hope and pray”), which thankfully has a very short learning curve for me. Just pop the cup of mixed resin into the vacuum, wait ten minutes and out comes mostly clear resin.

For the current page holder project, which is for The Harlequin, some bubbles cannot be avoided since I am placing in skeletal flowers, thorns, pine cones and other groundcover (because, related to the book), so that will introduce something but not as bad as before.

Does it speed things up? Not 100% but it takes out the bubbles, which is what I super like. Which means less B-sides that I don’t feel confident in giving out. Less B-sides mean less wasted materials, which is always a good thing because less wasted materials mean less time spent casting resin.

Now, my newest struggle – keeping cat hair out of my resin pours 🙃

* Don’t do what I do. It’s dangerous. Practice fire safety.