Casting insects in resin for jewelry purposes…need help!?
I’ve been trying to look for a tutorial online that teaches the proper way to encase insects in resin for jewelry and other things…..they are so neat to look at! However, I cannot find a step-by-step guide on how to do so (without someone saying its “cruel” or some ridiculous thing).
From the info I HAVE gathered, once you get your catalyst and resin mixed, you pour a thin layer and THEN place the bug down—-let it dry a bit—-and pour the rest over??? I also read something about needing to remove the air/oxygen from inside the bug before casting so it doesn’t rot?
Can anyone who HAS DONE INSECTS IN RESIN please tell me your experiences and the proper way to do so……and please save the “animal cruelty” crap for someone else…..don’t act like you wouldnt have killed the bug, anyways! LOL
P.S.—-I really want to resin a black widow spider……but I could assume that spiders may be more difficult to do given their thread-like legs. Any experience is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Posted in Jewelry | 
Tags: black widow spider, Blogs, bug, Casting, casting x, help, Henrietta, insects, Jewelry, P.S, purposes...need, resin, thin layer
3 Responses to “Casting insects in resin for jewelry purposes…need help!?”
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ok sorry i never did this but my friend dose this all the time and she says the bug has to be dead first because it will rot if it dies in the glass/clay thing
I have done this, but had the problem that if you just take a dried bug, often the air out of the bug will come out during curing and the resin isn’t transparent there. So, yes, getting air out is important. I think it’s less that the bug rots.
So I didn’t find it easy to get good results unless you try to get the resin into the bug as well. The solvents to make this easier are pretty toxic, so I don’t know whether to recommend this. I haven’t tried a vacuum pump which could pull air out of the bug while it is immersed in resin, it would probably be one of the better ways to go. The other way would be to use resin without the catalyst and immerse the bug in that for at least a couple of hours. Then remove most of that and replace it with resin with catalyst. That works better if the resin is less viscous – therefore if you do it in several steps with resin with a solvent (going from lots of solvent and little resin to very little solvent and mostly resin) it can work.
But the additional problem is to get the bug’s legs into a nice pose. That works well with a bug you can dry and pin the legs so they will hold shape while the bug is dry, but once the bug is in the solvent, that pose will disappear. It’s all a lot of work.
By the way, if you need to kill a bug, the best way is to put it into a freezer in a jar. The cold will first anesthetizes the bug before it kills it.