Rock Painting and Resin Part 1

The coronavirus lockdown has resulted in many people being really creative and I've seen some beautiful painted rocks on the internet. Ceredigion in West Wales is running a lovely project called Ceredigion Rocks, where people find rocks in various places throughout Ceredigion and then re-hide them so that others can enjoy them too. This was the start of a new project for me, but instead of varnishing them I wanted to seal them with resin so that they are super shiny and will last longer.

Rocks from my garden with designs pencilled on

I drew up some rough designs on paper and then prepared my rocks by washing them, letting them dry naturally and then painting a big white circle on most of them.  I used a compass for the circles. For the odd shaped ones I followed the shape of the rock and tried to keep the edge neat. Then I pencilled on my designs to fit the rock and circles. Some of my rocks were quite rough so this was a bit of a challenge in itself.

Some of my designs

The start of outlining and
painting my rocks

Glitter added to some rocks

The next stage was outlining all of my designs and then painting them.

This is quite difficult on some of the rougher rocks. I then painted each rock using acrylic paints while I waited for some metallic and glitter acrylic paints to arrive. This wasn't a quick job and took me a full week to do.

After painting all the rocks I added some metallic paints to some of them and also the acrylic glitter paint. They look really pretty at this stage. I finished each rock by tidying up any line work and adding some more details to some of them.

Stones with Resin

Now for the resin. I have never used resin before so made it up as best I could with a little china measuring spoon. Luckily the resin is a ratio of 1:1 (resin and hardener) but it is still not the most accurate way. I will probably get scales at a later date. I just followed the instructions of mixing it for 3 to 5 minutes with the end of an old paintbrush and then let it stand for 10 minutes. Gloves are a must for spreading on the resin, it is really thick and sticky and you don't need much. I only made up a teaspoon for the first batch and then a tablespoon for the rest. I smothered both sides with my hands making sure not to have too much on the bottoms. After this you are supposed to blow through a straw to remove any bubbles or use a blow torch. I opted for the straw method even though I couldn't see any air bubbles. I let them dry on my plastic cutting mats inside an underbed storage box so that no dust or anything could get to them. They are dry from 12 to 24 hours and are hard after 72 hours.

Tiny beach pebble that I used some leftover
resin on. Notice the little resin shelf.
This is the underside.

So I thought that would be it. Nothing is that easy or straight forward. When I removed them from the mat some had a little shelf of resin and some were a little rough where the resin had settled. Of course this wasn't just in the centre as I had chosen wonky rocks. The only way to remove the shelf or little resin spots was to sand them down with a dremel or file. So now I had little white patches on the bottom. Also after looking at the finish I noticed that some of them had little tiny pinpricks in them. After some research I learnt that this is very common and is either a reaction to oil or paint. Great! So to resolve this you need to sand them down and resin again. So this is the stage I am at now with both the tops and bottoms needing a second coat. If you have to do this be careful you don't rub down too hard or your paint will come off and also use a very fine sandpaper. Seriously, give me a break! I'm attaching 3 links at the bottom which are really helpful if you run into problems and don't know what the cause is.

I will post another blog on how they turned out but for now here are the links I mentioned:
Fixing Surface Imperfections in Resin/Common Problems
Fixing Pits in Resin
Resin Flaws