 Hey guys. All right. It's been a day plus a little bit. I've had computer issues this morning. I know that's not why you're here today, but I had an external hard drive that didn't want to work this morning. It didn't want to turn out. It was obvious turn on. It was obviously dying. So I went and got a new one plug the new one in went to go transfer stuff from the old one accidentally formatted the old one and or it died or something probably it was me and so I lost a whole bunch of stuff. Most of it was recoverable. I lost I did lose some photos, but still it's been a pain anyway. So this is one of the beads from the first batch of beads I did. And can you see there like all those bubbles that are in there? I did my best and I'm going to still use them and I'm okay with the way they look, but a lot of bubbles, right? So this with this last batch we torched the epoxy resin in the cup before we put the glitter and stuff in and then we of course torched it again before we ported it in the mold and look at this one. There's like no bubbles. I put my glasses on to be sure, but yeah, there's no bubbles. Now we also didn't put as much glitter and flower petals in and it made it much easier to pour into the mold. You get a more translucent bead, but I'm okay with that. I have to clean up the tops a little bit because no matter what you do, the tops come out funky. So the way to do that, you need some wet dry sandpaper. This is 800 grit and if you have a lot of stuff around the top, then you need to use something really harsh and abrasive like a Dremel grinding bit to get all that stuff off, but basically you just work at it with this super fine sandpaper and you get that ridge off smooth down as smooth as you can. I've done it a few different ways. I've done it with the Dremel. I've done it manually. I really, you have more control if you just do it by hand and just I'm going to zoom in a little bit because I'm going to put it on the table. If you just do it by hand, you have more control and you're less likely to make a mistake and to screw up your bead and then after you get it all sanded down and smooth and get that ridge off and you've gotten it as clean as you can, then you want to polish it with some Novas plastic polish which also comes in a few different grits. You just keep working at it. So I'm going to do this and I'll be right back. Hey guys, all right, this is the end of at least this batch of beads because now I'm done making beads for a while. So as I've said, this round bead mold is really challenging and hard to get both sides completely flat. I mean completely round. One side always seems to be wonky. I'm sure it's a user error. You can get some Nova. This is the Novas polishing, I guess, system. There's one, two, and three. You start with three to remove scratches. Then you go to two and then you go to one as a polishing. So I have one of my little beads here that I've kind of done a little bit. I'm going to take just a teeny bit of that number three and I'm going to go just around here where you see the little white specks which is actually some of this compound stuck in there. And you just follow the directions. I'm tempted to try this and see if I can get some of that off. And then go to number two. I got the polishing compound out in Amazon and it does work. It gets all the, like, really what I'm worried about is getting the scratch marks off from the sandpaper. I'm not worried about removing all these little white speckles that have been stuck in the air bubbles or making it round. I just don't want it to be all scratched up. And then I'm going to go to number one and I'm going to put it in my rag. I probably should have gloves on if way. You should probably put gloves on. I'm going to give it a couple sprays and that's the polishing. And that removes the majority of the scratches and makes it shiny again. You still have a defect on one end. So here's the bead afterwards. You still have a defect on one end. See all that? So the easy way to fix that is to cover it up. So get a little bead cap and I have some gorilla super glue and yes I've already glued my fingers to one of the beads once already. Because, you know, I'm going to need my Tim Holtz pokey tool. So I'm going to carefully, hopefully without gluing my fingers to any more beads, put a couple of drops of, come on, there we go, the glue on the top of the bead. I'm going to use my pokey tool to pick up the bead cap and do that. And oh yes, I just glued my fingers to the bead again. Anyway, in theory that works. I did manage it quite a few times before I started glue. I think I'm just getting tired. So you should do that and then just let it dry minus the fingerprints. And you will get something that looks like this. Nice finished little memorial bead. So I'm doing a lot of things wrong I'm sure, but I'm going to keep working at it and try to get them right. If you have any tips, tricks, or ideas, you want to try making some memorial beads, I would love to see. I do think and know I have way better luck at molding things like this. This is a cabochon mold and it already, this is a mold that has, this is brand new, it just came today. So this mold I'm going to like using because it already has a little post in here. So when you mold this piece, it's already got a hole drilled in it, in it so you don't have to drill anything. So these are much easier because they're flat on the back. These shapes are really challenging and again if one of you out there has an idea, or ideas for how to get this round bead mold to work, I would sure love to hear. And this is the only way to fix it when you get your fingerprints super glued onto the bead. I could use a different kind of glue and that's probably a good idea to use a different kind of glue. This is the wet dry sandpaper. So the only thing to do is find out where you stuck your fingers on the bead, sand it off, and repolish it. It is fixable because I did fix another one that I did. And it would of course be the one that I am doing when I have the camera on, sorry that was all my devices just decided to go off at the same time, it would be the one that I am working on when I turn the camera on that I stick my fingers to because you know why wouldn't it be. If you get a lot of glue on there like this one, so take some of your heavy sandpaper and really coarse sand all the glue off. I've thrown a few beads across the room too by accident people, not on purpose. I should clarify that statement and then the black one. Just turn on some music. If you don't care about them not being perfect then you don't have to do all this just mold them, release them and make something with them. You definitely could do that and I will be doing that with some of them. I just really am experimenting and wanted to see how hard it would be to do it this way. That feels better. So now we're going to put our number three on there. I'm just making sure I've got the right one and rubbing it in, buffing it off, number two and number one. And it's amazing that if you just sit here and do this to these beads it does get all the, at least most of the scratches out to be honest with you. I had my doubts about whether it was going to work or not but it does work. Okay then I do have some stuff stuck in the hole so I'm going to reset the hole. There we go. So there we go. It's all fixed. Is it perfect? No. Do I want it to be? Not necessarily. So have some fun with it. Create some memorial beads for yourself and save those precious memories and something you can have with you or carry around with you every day. How fun would that be? So I'm going to clean up because I actually have somebody coming over and I hope you have fun with this. If you have any ideas for making these round resin beads, any tips, let me know. Craft Clatch does have resin tutorials. She does a lot of coasters. There are some other channels out there that do resin tutorials. If you have a good one, let me know. I'll try to link the one that I know of in the description and that's it for today. If you want to support my channel or join one of my Facebook groups, send me happy mail, send me an email, all of the information I'm trying to do that's in the description below so please check it out. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe and above all go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye guys.