Design and Build a Resin Lamp

Design and Build a Resin Lamp

“It has been a pleasure to share my +10 years of expertise working with resin with you. I hope you have enjoyed this course as much as I have. It is time now for you to design and experiment with resin casting. Remember that mistakes are ok, and you should see them as an opportunity to improve any object you can imagine and design. Before I go, I wanted to go through all the steps and techniques I shared with you in the course: SAFETY FIRST First, we looked at the utmost important element when working with resin: safety. Be safety-minded, and protect yourself and the environment. Resin can be toxic, so you have to know how to read a data sheet and pick the best mask, gloves, or suit for you and understand how to find that information on a data sheet before buying any resin or silicone.

FINDING INSPIRATION Where can you find inspiration? I find it everywhere: in a market, at a café... Look for shapes and objects you find interesting and use them as a starting point. For this course, I picked a prism. You can choose any shape or object you like. Remember that the creative process relies on experimentation, making mistakes, and changing your mind at any moment. EXPERIMENTING WITH RESIN AND COLOUR Then it was time to start experimenting and having fun with resin, moulds, and pigments to create stunning colours. We first learned how to pour resin (again, taking into account the datasheet). Then we jumped into creating our first mould. As you saw, you can make a mould out of virtually anything. You only need practice and choosing the right materials for your creative vision. Once we built our first simple mould, we used simple plastic lids to learn how pigments work and to create a colour palette and label it. And then we jumped into throwing objects at the resin and saw how it reacted. Remember that you can use organic and inorganic elements! MOVING INTO DESIGNING AND BUILDING OUR PIECE As I mentioned before, I picked a prism as my reference to build my unique resin lamp. We first dimensioned the object and built a model of it, which will be our centre point to keep designing our piece. We incorporated an electrical component (as lamps need a light bulb!) and saw how the shape of both the bulb and the socket affected the design and refined it to adjust the measurements and dimensions and think of the different resin pieces needed to create your artwork. Once we finished with the design, it was time to building the moulds. I used silicone and cast the resin, which I later unmoulded. At this stage, I showed you different ways to create moulds (negative, positive, silicone on silicone, etc.). Some are easier than others. Use them as inspiration to create and define the best moulds for your project. Again, safety first: calculate the right amount of resin you use and its hardness time - it is expensive, you don't want to waste it! POLISHING AND ASSEMBLING With all the resin pieces ready, we proceed to do the final touch: polishing. How much you want to polish each of the pieces is also a design decision. Take into account that the colours you picked and the light will play a role in the outcome. I used an orbital sander but, if you don’t have one, you can use regular sandpaper - it will just take a little longer. Finally, we put everything together, the pieces and the electrical components, did some final adjustments, and turned our lamp on! I hope you enjoyed the course and are eager to experiment and enjoy working with resin as much as I do. I am looking forward to seeing your designs and resin objects, and hopefully, one day, we will be doing an exhibition of our art pieces together. Once you are ready to turn your project in, click on "Create a project" and submit to. As you noticed, throughout the course, I laid out plenty of exercises and tasks meant for you to take part in the forum and engage in meaningful interactions not just with me, but with the community. Use it to your advantage, as you can learn from others and be part of an inviting group of like-minded people. See you! ”

Partial transcription of the video

“you arrive till the end of the course. I hope. that you enjoy my course because one of the most important things is having fun. And I really want to tell you if you failed, That's normal. This is not an easy job. I spent the first year in making, and the first show was a disaster. that was people stitched on my furniture. But you know, you can learn and you can grow. just resume what we did. That will be helpful for any project. that you are doing after the course with the resin. So first of all, security. Always read. Datashit. Check the data shit. Also, if they say that this non-toxic. Or...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Design and Build a Resin Lamp

• Level: Beginner
• 97% positive reviews (596)
• 28526 students
• 5 units
• 21 lessons (3h 48m)
• 11 downloads

• Category

  Craft

• Areas

  Arts & Crafts, Decoration, DIY, Furniture Design & Making, Interior Design