Rainbow Breastmilk Heart Tutorial – Advanced UV Resin Jewellery Making. Making breastmilk stones with diamond powder and sparkle mixes. Keepsake jewellery using a mould to make a cabochon stone technique. You’ll find more info on preserving milk and making pieces with stones and direct pours in our Advanced Breastmilk Jewellery Course. Recently I’ve created two free courses to help people learn how to make breastmilk and memorial jewellery – click here to register and take them! I’m using one of our gold vermeil necklace settings which are great for rubbing over a stone, which is also available in solid gold here. The breastmilk kit option for the necklace comes with a single mould, so you can make a couple of cabochons . Our gold vermeil necklaces are not hallmarked, you can read about different types of gold here in Types of Gold. If you’d like me to make this necklace for you in full or want to see how I list it on Tree of Opals here it is.
Rainbow Breastmilk Heart Tutorial Video
@keepsakersuppliesRainbow Breastmilk Heart Tutorial My Linktree: http://linktr.ee/keeptree with diamond powder – a tutorial for making a breastfeeding keepsake necklace. Thank you to my client for permission to film this video anonymously. Please wear full PPE and don’t do this around children or pets. Here’s where to see the full blog with the video transcript and all the equipment I used: https://bit.ly/MilkHeartRainbow
@keepsakersuppliesTT Rainbow Breastmilk Heart Tutorial
After your first order you’ll receive a reasonable 15% off future purchases*. Firstly, when making breastmilk jewellery send your client a breastmilk sending kit, see this blog How To Make Sending Kits for advice on instructing clients on sending in breastmilk, here are the sending kit instructions templates and here are the 5ml Breastmilk Sending Tubes we sell. We hadn’t sent this client a kit in the post; he sent me a full bag of breastmilk, triple bagged, and the rest of the milk is in tubes in my freezer now as he gave permission to give it to my clients for practice. I like to suggest that the client keeps another 10 mil in their freezer in case it’s lost in the post
You’ll need the following supplies
one of our DIY breastmilk necklace kits the breastmilk version of the kits contain:
- a single silicone mould
- a necklace setting – this is one of our gold vermeil 18mm crown point heart settings
- vinyl gloves
- resin sparkle mix (you can use eyeshadows or singles)
- a dust mask
- label backing paper
- some sandpaper
- 3 cocktail sticks
- 10g UV resin
- breastmilk preservation powder
You’ll also need your client’s breastmilk for this project. We ask them to only send half an ounce (around 15ml)! That way, if it’s lost in the post they can send a little more. Tools and Equipment
- LED UV lamp**
- 20ml mixing cups
- Padico Star Drop UV resin
- a tiny measuring spoon
- small sparkle applicators
- diamond powder
- curved burnisher or a teaspoon
- gold vermeil chain
- gold polishing cloth (a silver one is fine for gold)
RECEIVING BREASTMILK Before starting, I preserved and dried the client’s milk, being careful to keep it labelled
Diamond Rainbow Breastmilk Heart Tutorial
Today we’re learning how to create a rainbow effect in a resin cabochon stone and adding genuine diamond powder. In August I taught you how to do a rainbow effect in a direct pour in a teardrop bezel cup with fur: the Petrol Rainbow Fur Dangle Charm tutorial. I used five colours, but we’re using seven in this tutorial today for a more traditional rainbow. You’ll need a small mixing cup for each of the seven colours. Add around 1ml of clear UV resin, a small bead of pre-mixed resin sparkle mix, and a tiny spoonful of preserved, dried and ground breastmilk powder.
To learn how to preserve, dry and grind breastmilk watch Preserving Breastmilk Part 1. We now sell pre-mixed resin sparkle mixes in these opaque pots. They contain Padico Star Drop UV resin which is the highest quality UV resin in the world, and what I always use for my jewellery these days. You can easily refill the pots with our loose sparkle refill packs and your usual UV resin. I normally use tiny 20ml mixing cups but I’d run out, they’re back in stock now though and they’re much smaller and more convenient than these 30ml cups.
Mix each colour in turn. A rainbow starts at the top with red, then orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. I prefer the red to be at the bottom and the last two colours I use purple and pink. This is an 18mm heart stone mould. Place a drop of clear resin in the bottom corner. Then swirl in some of the red milk sparkle mix. You only need the teeniest bit! Cure for 10 seconds and then repeat with each colour. As there are seven colours, a good indicator that the stripes are the required width is that the fourth colour, green, is in the middle of the mould. Sometimes I like to do the colours going slightly diagonally and with a curve like a rainbow. Or, I like to swirl the layers very gently so that there isn’t a sharp line between them. For the second layer, you can use a little clear and the colour mix or just the colour mix. I’m just using the colour mix here but I had added a little more clear into each mixing pot. In the third layer I wanted to bulk out the stone, or I’d be there all day, so I did a layer of clear! I cured this one when I realised I had made a mistake in forgetting an important element. Always re-read the label and the order just before you start, even if you’ve got everything laid out. I wanted to show you that even after eight years doing this almost every day, I still make the odd mistake and have to start again!
In these stones, I’m also adding a little bit of genuine diamond powder mixed in with the clear resin. This is to represent two years of breastfeeding, known as diamond boobies. When I first started making breastmilk jewellery the awards were only bronze, silver and gold (3, 6 and 12 months) so I made them more inclusive. They go all the way up to ten years and beyond, with special awards for donating or donor milk feeding and for feeding through CMPA et cetera. I find that if it’s a sunny day, sometimes that will cause things to cure before I want them to, so I’ll shut the shutters on the workshop window and switch the light on whilst I’m working with UV resin. You must be super careful that no UV light reaches your pre-mixed pots, so just take the lid off to remove a small bead for each mixing cup. You also have to keep the mixing cups away from UV light too, or they will turn to jelly before you’ve used them. My little tip is to keep them in a box on your desk away from your lamp, and also cover your lamp in a box or a towel whilst it’s in use. In the second layer I’m just using the colour mixes. It doesn’t matter if they overlap a little (unless you want sharp lines). Try making a few stones like I’m doing here and give your client the choice. Clear for the third layer again here. You could use epoxy resin for this piece but you’d be there for days mixing up resin for each layer so I definitely recommend UV resin especially for complicated techniques like this. Layer four is colour mix again so the colour is nice on the back too, which is good if the setting is open backed. On this layer I’m not curing between each colour and I love the little wave pattern here between the yellow and green! This is another little variation you can try both in a mould and in a direct pour setting. A layer of clear for the back is perfect, or you can use UV top coat. These are the five stones I made for my client, who kindly gave me permission to film anonymously. She chose stone number three (top right) whereas I fell in love with stone number five (bottom right). I wanted to take a photo of a breastmilk heart in a gold vermeil heart setting, so I am setting it here whilst I wait for the client to choose her favourite stone. This is solid sterling silver, plated with gold and is an affordable alternative to solid gold, which I also sell. Trim the edges of the stone. I like to use side cutting pliers and a diamond file, but scissors and a bit of sandpaper work well too. I thought the back was a bit too domed so I’m flattening it on some 180 grit sandpaper. If you scratch the stone or you want it to be a bit shinier, pop the stone on a bit of WhiteTack and dome with resin or UV top coat. I cured a couple of times then filpped it over and levelled out the back. Pop it in the setting and use a curved burnisher to press down the crown points. The client ended up choosing a different stone which I set in an engraved scalloped heart and I made her a matching 10mm heart dangle charm necklace as a spare and a set of direct pour heart earrings. Don’t forget, I’ve linked to all the supplies I’m using in the video description or there’s a link in my bio, or you can just go to KeepsakerSupplies.com Now relax and do some crafting