uv resin crafts Archives - ChipInHead.com

My UV resin experiments just continue to get wilder.

I made this mantis using a green floral wire armature, then layers of green and yellow filament from my 3D printer pen.

The 3D printer pen filament helped to bulk out and define the structure, while still letting light through.

I like using the pen because it is fast and dirty construction, which suits my essential nature. I also used a piece of pretty green metallic foil I had saved from a package or something to fill out the mantis’s butt.

Then I started wiring thousands of green glass beads all over it.

I strung the beads, crystals and pearls on fine gauge colored craft wire that I looped in and out of the wire armature.

About halfway into the beading I started stabilizing the bead strands with blobs of green-tinted UV resin!

This was during the very intense August heat wave in Berlin, so I was hanging out in the library with my husband in the air-conditioning. I used both the sunlight coming in the window and my high-powered nail artist’s uv lamp to cure the resin.

I needed more sunlight to make the drips, though!

Because UV resin cures almost instantly in sunlight, I could sit out on our balcony dripping and dropping blobs of resin all over the armature, creating transparent structure and threads of color. It was very hot, but I figure it was good to get the vitamin D in.

I made the wings using florists wire and some green glitter tulle I got five years ago.

The first summer we were here, I had very limited art materials. I had a sketchbook, pencils and pens, and the embroidery materials and fabric that Beloved Friend-Muse-Patron Eva Galperin bought me at the craft store at the mall at Stadtmitte.

Of course, I keep every scrap of everything.

(See making of the Giant Alien Venus Flytrap, seen above, here!) So I had green tulle left over from when I made the jewelled mantis that summer of 2015, and I used it to cover the floral wire wing shapes, attaching it with UV resin.

I attached the wings and antenna with UV resin, because it is an amazing adhesive.

It is faster than superglue/CA in direct sunlight, and you can use an instantly hardening bolus of it as a base to hold something steady. In the mantis post from 2015 I talk a lot about my lifelong obsession with transparent mediums, and my frustration with the ones available. Which is funny because I have now found a transparent material I really love working with at last!

Finishing this mantis on the balcony today, I could really feel the difference in the sun.

Autumn is here and Winter is coming,

So the resin drip art will be ending til next year. We don’t get enough sunlight to make Vitamin D or cure UV resin in the winters here! That’s ok, I have plenty of other weird insect art projects in the pipeline 🙂

The other articulated mantis sculpture is here.

Fire UV resin and Angelina Fantasy Film crown by Suzanne Forbes July 2020

There is a fluidity in the process of using materials that are themselves changeant.

I also love not knowing what I’m doing or if it is gonna work! It may seem silly, but working on these projects allows me to access flow state or what Keats called “Negative Capability“.

A poet, then, has the power to bury self-consciousness, dwell in a state of openness to all experience, and identify with the object contemplated.

Gieza Poke in crowns by Suzanne Forbes June 2020

I need to handle these materials, I want these beautiful items to exist, but I don’t need to keep them once they’re in the world!

So many of my mixed media projects this summer were donated to queer Berlin fundraiser raffles. I am adding value to the Berlin Queerconomy in every way I can!

Gieza Poke has done most of the raffles, on the live twitchstream of Gieza‘s Poke House in Quarantine. She made awesome and hilarious videos to promote them! Beautiful Keili won the wave crown, which was so perfect! Gieza wore the fire crown for the last Quarantine show.

Fire and Water UV resin and holographic vinyl crowns by Suzanne Forbes July 2020 outside

You can see the archive of the five months of quarantine shows, all of which were livestreamed, here, under the VIDEOS tab of Gieza’s twitch account,

ChipInHead.com

Suzanne Forbes, a New Yorker thriving in Berlin. Crowdfunded documentary art made possible by the generous support of her Patrons. https://www.patreon.com/SuzanneForbes.

Tag Archives: uv resin crafts

West Berlin mantis party redux, five years later!

My UV resin experiments just continue to get wilder.

The 3D printer pen filament helped to bulk out and define the structure, while still letting light through.

Then I started wiring thousands of green glass beads all over it.

About halfway into the beading I started stabilizing the bead strands with blobs of green-tinted UV resin!

I needed more sunlight to make the drips, though!

I made the wings using florists wire and some green glitter tulle I got five years ago.

Of course, I keep every scrap of everything.

I attached the wings and antenna with UV resin, because it is an amazing adhesive.

Finishing this mantis on the balcony today, I could really feel the difference in the sun.

Fire and Water Crowns: A Sacred Heart and Waves of Love for Queer Berlin

I made these two crowns during June and July, which feels like a century ago.

The wave crown is made of holographic vinyl, cut into waves and shaped.

Then I added loops of wired beads and lots of opalescent crystals.

There is a fluidity in the process of using materials that are themselves changeant.

I need to handle these materials, I want these beautiful items to exist, but I don’t need to keep them once they’re in the world!

I am so grateful to my Patreon Patrons‘ support of my mixed media artwork, the place I feel safest with evolving and experimenting. It’s what I do instead of vacation 🙂 !

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