I try to make emeralds

Emeralds are my favorite stone.

Cartier necklace

My birthstone is Peridot, which is kind of a Olive-green.

It just doesn't reach the same heights as Emerald.


The other day when I was at Hobby Lobby, I found a new interesting material.

This stuff is for making lakes and water features for model train scenes.

It doesn't smell, like real resin, and doesn't need to be mixed in carefully measured parts.

It also doesn't even need an oven to melt.

I thought it would be interesting to try in my various candy molds.



I used my torch and heated the beads in a clay container.

Today I decided to try to make faux emeralds.

The instructions said to use powdered fabric dye, to tint the "water."

At the moment, I had blue pigment, and gold Pearl-Ex dust.

I heated the beads and pigment in the bowl, and poured it into the molds.

It looked promising, (but not emerald green)



This is what the un-tinted plastic looks like (from an earlier test):

I have never seen this used in jewelry.

Maybe because the result is a little brittle, harder than a crayon, but you can snap it.

It's prettier than hot glue stick material, though.



One thing I noticed is that all my molds have a kind of matte surface.

The flat side not touching the mold was more shiny.

The gold powder settled in the resin like "poured" paint does.



I still wanted emerald green, so I bought some powdered dye.

(If I look hard enough, I could probably find dye at home, from my tie-dye phase.

Some anniversary of the Summer of Love, and NOT two years ago...)


I used too much dye, so the shapes ended up nearly black.

The "shiny side" looked a little gloopy-

maybe the mixture, (the dye is mostly salt crystals) or I took them out of the mold too fast.

But when I held the trinket up to the light, I felt like I was getting somewhere!