
First off, let me start by apologizing for my terrible photos. I actually have two decent cameras, and yet I continue to take and post pictures using my cell phone. Out of pure laziness! It’s just so darn easy with dropbox….you take a picture and then WHAM! The picture is on every computer you own. I swear I am going to go get new batteries and a nice fresh memory card for my good camera this week.
Anyway, a few months back I had bought a surprise bag of costume jewelry from a local thrift shop. In there was this really cool dichroic glass pendant. In an attempt to replicate with resin, I searched the web for ideas and came across this colored film from a company called Little Windows. For a mere five bucks, you get 14 sheets of colored film, including two sheets of textured film. The method used is you crinkle up the film, cut to fit your mold, and insert into your resin.

cutting the film to fit the molds

a tinted resin background will make the dichroish paper “pop”. Different colors yield different results!

The leftover pieces from where you cut can be chopped up into confetti for odd shaped molds.
The Little Windows website recommends using a colored base behind the film to make the film “pop”. You can either make your mold with clear resin and then after you pop them out of the molds apply a layer of colored resin to “dome” the piece, or, as I usually do, you can lay down the colored resin first, let it dry, and then add your clear and your film. The reason I do it this way is because I usually have some resin left over in my cup when I finish a project, so I tint it with color and use it to make my base layers in the molds.

The molds, all filled up. The waiting begins……
When I first started doing resin, I bought some fancy resin pigments, and liquid rit dye, as suggested on the internets. But I have come to find that good old acrylic paints work just as well, they come in hundreds of colors, and they cost like 68 cents a bottle at Walmart. I might add here that I really do think adding the colored layer AFTER you pop your molds out does come out looking alot better, as the molds were meant to be used with the bottom of the mold being the top of the pendant. But I have a weird phobia about wasting stuff, and I hate to waste anything including leftover resin from another project.

bezeled bracelet blank with blue tinted resin already dried. Full sheets of paper, and one piece of crinkled paper. Cut out circles to fit exactly in the bezels.
Obviously, if you are using a bezel or a braclet blank, you have no choice but to add the colored resin in first. When cutting the foil paper to fit, try and get it exact or even a slight bit smaller or else you will have a tiny edge of paper sticking up out of your resin at the end. I found this out the hard way.

laying out the paper circles before pouring the resin.

This is a gold bezel I did, you can see in the top that I cut the paper too big! A piece is sticking out, effectively driving me to insanity. Sigh.

Green crinkle resin ring. The hardest part of doing rings is keeping them level while they dry.
So as you can see from the following pictures, using different colored backgrounds yields different results. The papers themselves come in a variety of shades, so mixing up the paint and the papers makes tons of different results. You can even NOT use any colored background, those come out awesome, too!

the finished bracelet

closeup of the finished bracelet

blue based pendants that still need to be filed…..

assorted colored foils

light turquoise backgrounds

Red background
With the leftover scraps of the dicroish paper, cut them into tiny pieces of confetti. I use them for oddly shaped molds instead of trying to cut out a perfect heart or hexagon.

confetti on blue background

confetti on black background
You can also either make no background color at all, or don’t crinkle the paper, leave it flat. I wore this pendant with uncrinkled paper to work yesterday and had alot of compliments, people couldn’t figure out what the heck it was made of!

No background color, just pure clear resin.

Uncrinkled piece of dicroish paper is super pretty, too!