UV Gel Plate tests

 August 9 - 15th 2021

Continuing with the UV gel plate tests and have had quite a few failures.

First thing was to try and find some cheap semi-permanent nail polish that hardens with UV light. I did find some white paste like gel at the dollar store (altho it cost €8.79 euro for 30ml - not a dollar) and still needed to be mixed with the clear gel I bought specifically for this (10ml for €9.00) so that product is not quite the right thing, but the plate test did come out a bit better. So my next test involved using some nail polish that I found at the local mall. I bought some white polish and made a plate from it no problem. Didn’t even need to add any of the UV clear gel. It hardened under the UV lamp in under two minutes. Next was to try and add in the design.

First thing I lost around two days installing a new printer. I had to test the printer to be sure I could install it on my Mac (which is pretty full) and that went no problem. Then I had to find some ink jet cartridges for it. My old printer works fine (even nicer than this one) but the HP cartridges are hard to find now (not making them anymore) and at €49 for two, the newer printer and it’s cheaper cartridges (€34 for two) makes it a better choice. I am not a huge printer of things but when I print out mostly for my mini stuff I need the color printer. So I’m hoping these will last me a few months at least. After having removed and re-boxed the old one, I printed off the labels on normal paper high dpi on the new one and they’re good enough since I will be applying other medium on top of them and they will lose a lot of details anyway. I attempted to use a new clear UV gel sandwiching the plate design between that and the white nail polish but when you squish the plate mold the white overflows into the design in front. Not only, seems that this gel is really only good for adhering the semi-permanent polish to fingernails and not as an outer layer. So will have to continue to use the pure white nail polish to make the plates and find another way to add the designs. First fail.

You can see the difference from plate one to the mixed medium plate. Better but not perfect.

Trying sizing on the design into the silicone plate mold.

How the design would eventually fit in.

Full white nail polish result from the mold.

Result after hardening - the white invaded the top side of the plate - so, not acceptable.

In the meantime, I wanted to also run a test in adding color to the white nail polish. I used a green chalk pastel to the white but also this was a failure. The ratio of powder to liquid makes the nail polish too diluted to harden sufficiently. I ended up re-enforcing the underside with the specific gel I bought for the silicone molds and coaxing the plates out of the mold. Even after many minutes under the UV lamp, the plates just weren’t hardening sufficiently, so I added a little to the top too. I don’t think these green ones are salvageable - no matter how much I add on top the inside is still not cured (even after leaving over night and back under the UV lamp the next day). Fail two.

Mixing the green pastel chalk...

...under the UV light for hardening....

Nada, this was a throw away trial.

I figured the problem was the thickness of the actual liquid in the mold. If I put too much polish in the then it cannot harden thru - especially when I’ve corrupted it with pastel.  To test this, I filled a mini croissant mold to see if the polish would harden thru. I put it under the light for around 3 minutes and it did come out ok - seemed hardened thru. But I tried to sand and shape a bit a bigger one and it cracked and gel oozed out. Not hard enough all the way thru. Back under the lamp till they harden up. It was just a test anyway since these molds are actually for use with Fimo type clay, not really with the UV gel. So, thickness makes the difference. Pseudo fail.

Croissant mold test....

...after curing but still not solid all the way thru.

The next test was using acrylic paint to color the white nail polish instead of chalk. So I added some yellow acrylic paint and two drops of the UV super gel then used a paint brush to dose out the amount of product in the mold. It took a few tries to fill it sufficiently. When you squeeze the mold it fills areas too so once it seems covered I stuck the plate under the lamp. I eased it out of the mold on one side, under the lamp again then eased it out the other. Success! The trick is the acrylic paint. Seems it doesn’t inhibit the hardening of the gel. But still, once I started to sand down the plate I found areas where the gel was not hardened completely. So still, not the best solution.

Filling the mold with colored gel polish....

...result after sufficient hardening.

The learning curve. From first to last plate.

Lessons learned so far? If I want intense colored plates, I’ll have to paint them after making them.  It’s way too much work and waste of the product to mix the white polish, acrylic paint and drops of the super UV gel. It’ll be faster if I make all the plates white and apply the designs onto them. The whole point of making these plates from a mold is because I was not able to find white ones that are this thin and delicate looking. So I think I am on the right track! Next step - finding a way to make my own decals to transfer the Amalfi type designs onto the plates… we will see how that works out…..

Painting and Playing

12th April - 15th April 2021

Starting painting the exterior

So, getting back to my mini project, I started looking into methods of aging the bricks and got side tracked. I will need to paint both inside and out of each panel so I started to think about the interior decoration while doing that. I am planning to use the typical Tuscan and even Amalfi style of tiling on the inside. Yes, it’s true, most of these limonaia never really had tiling from top to bottom but I am going to put some mural tiles on the inside of each section under the windows.  Also here I will need to age these a bit but I needed at least to start off by finding some images to use.  So after digging around on the internet, I managed to find some and adjusted the dimensions somewhat to fit my needs. First was to print them out in black and white on the normal printer to check sizing etc. Then I print them out on my color printer, again on normal paper.  I like the colors very much! So bright!

Sizing and placement tests

Years ago I had bought some little ugly 2cm by 2cm glass mosaic tiles at a craft store. They were cheap and crappy quality but I plan on covering them with little citrus images and tile designs. I was going to use these in the spaces under the windows but the sizes do not match up and since they are glass and not acrylic, I needed to make some tests on cutting them to size.

 

First little tile done.

So, in the meantime, I screwed around with putting an image on one anyway, just to test it out.  I glued it on with watered down Vinavil glue (no such thing as Modge Podge here in Italy), then a little on the outside being careful not to apply too much to avoid smudging the inkjet image. Once it was dry, I varnished up the outside. I made it pretty thick so that the tile didn’t have a super even surface or streaks.  I think it came out great! Now just have to fool around with trying to cut them just to see if I can and be able to use them elsewhere in the tea room. (I found this image off a vendor on Amazon)

 

In my searches on the net I came across another person writing about lemons and Florentine lemons, just a small excerpt but nice none the less.  The blog has lots of info! Check it out!

Citrus vs. Lemon

July 21st 2019

Yes, time flies - wish it were because I was having fun but not so. Busy work and life schedule and health issues - I suppose not so much me as my husband but cannot do much about that. Most is  brought on by excessive lifestyle of eating and drinking.  There are not so many vices left in our lives - gave up smoking long ago. Alcohol and food are all that’s left I guess…. We are worshipers of Baccus. And he is taking his toll.

Caravaggio's Bacchus  - 1595 - Uffizzi - Florence Italy

So anyway, the other day I was home from work on my way to the doctor and had some free time. It’s been so long that I had even looked at my Orangery project I couldn’t even remember what I had bought and not.  There had been a small earthquake at the Japanese Ryokan (see the blog) so I was pretty frustrated overall about getting back to mini-ing.  But during a work convention I ran into my ex-colleague and muse of minis and she was wondering if I had gone back to the project or not.  Since we stopped working together, we both have lost our mini-ing passion.  Seems we were a sort of stimulus for each other.  But she was encouraging so having recently put the Ryokan back together after the earthquake and cleaning off my work table I decided to take a look at things.  Soon enough I started thinking about what I could do each evening or weekend to get back to making something.  And, here I am, writing the next installment after having dug around to remember what materials I have and have not.

So, here is a pic of the kit I bought ages ago.

Greenhouse Kit - bought two.

I actually bought two.  One end is completely open - it was made to butt up against a dollhouse for installation. I am going to make them both and install little hinges between them for opening and closing - or keep them unattached and install them back to back when displaying them - making them one greenhouse.

Bricks mortar and marble sheet.

I had already bought the bricks and mortar (I actually had do do an email search on my computer to find the order receipts as I could not find the materials!! - I had put them away for later and forgot where I had put them or even wasn’t sure I had bought them!)  The bricks will be installed on the side panels under the windows of the greenhouse in the style of Kensington.  I will have to paint everything white though first. And I managed to locate the “hard wood” flooring sheet and the “marble” self sticking sheet for the floors. I think I will use the marble for the greenhouse floor and the wood for making the counter shop table tops more interesting.  So, with my camera battery now charged and at least a few steps planned out, maybe I can get cracking !!

And here is an ugly lemon pic.

I will try and add lemon lore in here every now and then. This one is called a citron or cedro in Italian. I guess ancient versions of it (etrog) even have important religious significance in the Jewish faith.  You can look up info on it but I love the ugliness of the fruit.  Some of the lemons I got recently from Amalfi are just as ugly so I put them in a jar with salt to make salted lemons.  You can check out the recipe here. Make sure your lemons are unwaxed if you are going to make the recipe. Maybe the uglier the better!

So that is all for today.  Hopefully I wil l have enough energy to do something else this week.

Till later !!