When I left off with Mr. Spatula’s water cooler, I’d made a rather sad attempt at using resin and decided that would not be a good way to achieve a water effect. My second attempt was going to be a snow globe, but I was concerned about the castle (which is a metal charm) rusting in the water. Mr. Spatula wouldn’t like that.

Snow globes are made with regular water plus a few drops of glycerin, a clear gel-like substance that adds weight to the water so the snow/glitter/whatever in the globe drifts when you shake it. My aquarium won’t have any drifting pieces, but I planned to make my snow globe the same way (because why not?) and bought a little jar of glycerin for that purpose. In the comments on my last post someone suggested using just the glycerin and not the water, so I wouldn’t have to worry about the castle rusting. Hey, good idea! (Why didn’t I think of that?!)

I painted another castle and put together another base. (If you’re just tuning in, you can read about the process of making the base here.) This time I used the waterproof Silicone Sealant and Adhesive to glue everything down. I don’t know if “waterproof” applies to glycerin, but it seemed more likely to hold up in wet conditions than regular glue.

I used monofilament to attach Mr. Spatula to the base this time. It’s more invisible than the plastic shopping tag thingie I used last time.

I covered the top edge of the dome with masking tape, to prevent getting glycerine on the glass where I would want glue to stick.

I measured slightly more than 1/2 tablespoon of glycerin into my little shot glass measuring cup and used a funnel from the kitchen to pour it in. (The glycerin is food safe — it’s used in cake icing.)

Like with the resin, I wasn’t able to get all of the thick glycerin out of the shot glass and the funnel, so I ended up with less in the dome than I wanted. I even added another few drops out of the glycerin bottle, but I didn’t want to overdo it. I added the silicone adhesive to the cork and pushed it in.

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Continuing with Mr. Spatula’s water cooler, I planned to make two versions, one with resin water and one with real water like a snow globe. The castle inside the water cooler is a metal charm and I’m concerned it will rust if it sits in water. I spent a very long time looking online for a plastic charm I could use in the snow globe version, thinking “If only I could find a plastic version of the same charm I already have…”

Well, hey! Why not make one out of resin?

I bought a package of Amazing Mold Putty from Michaels. (The price is $23 on the website but it was $26 in the store. Lame.) The way this stuff works is, you take a glob out of the A package and a same-sized glob out of the B package and knead them together until the putty is a uniform color.

Then you squish the thing you want to make the mold of into the putty and let it sit there for about twenty minutes.

I glued pins to the charm, sticking out the bottom, to help secure it to the cork base. I included the pins on the castle I made the mold of, thinking this would allow me to insert pins before I poured in the resin and have them be embedded in the castle.

Looks pretty good! I scraped a razor blade over the top of the mold to make it flat(ish).

Next it was time to mix the resin. I’m using EasyCast. Like the putty, there are two bottles — the resin and the hardener — and you need to mix exactly the same amount of each one together.

Since I’ll also be filling up a dome with resin, I decided to use this process as practice and figured out exactly how much resin I needed to add to the dome to have it stop just above the castle. I poured water into a dome and eyeballed it next to the finished base (I didn’t want to get the base wet) to estimate that 1/2 tablespoon of water or resin would reach just above the top of the castle.

On a paper cup, I drew a line at 3/4 teaspoons (which is half of 1/2 tablespoon) and a second line at 1/2 tablespoon, with the intention of pouring the resin up to the first line and then adding hardener up to the second line.

I set up a light shining at the cup so I’d be able to see the lines from the other side.

The instructions for the resin are to pour equal amounts from both bottles into the same cup and stir for two minutes, then transfer to another cup and stir with a new stir stick for an additional minute. I’m not sure what the reasoning is for pouring into the second cup, but I did it. I set up my phone on the table with the stopwatch running so I could make sure I stirred for the appropriate amount of time.

Turns out this was much too much resin for the mold! However, I noticed that a lot of resin didn’t make it out of the first cup and into the second cup, so what I ended up pouring in was somewhat less than 1/2 tablespoon. This was important to learn, since once it came time to pour resin into the dome I wouldn’t have a second chance to fill it up more — so I knew now that trying to pour in *exactly* the right amount wasn’t going to work.

(Also, I forgot to put the pins in before I poured in the resin. Oops.)

I set it aside for 24 hours, per the instructions. After 24 hours it was still a bit sticky, so I let it sit another 24 hours. The next day it was the same amount of sticky, so I decided to pop it out of the mold anyway.

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I finished the Sam & Max Freelance Police roombox back in September, but I’ve been holding off on building furniture for it until the action figures from Boss Fight Studio ship — since I’m making most of the furniture from scratch, I want to have them handy as a size reference. Unfortunately the release date has been delayed on these and they’re not expected to ship until the spring.

The most complicated piece I have to build is Mr. Spatula’s water cooler. I’ve been thinking for months about how to do this, and decided to bite the bullet on the aquarium part. I can build the base later when I have the figures.

I’ve never made a dollhouse aquarium before, but they’re usually made with clear resin as water. Normally you pour the resin in through the open top of the aquarium, and can position the fish in the resin as it dries. But since a water cooler is enclosed at the top, I had to figure out another method. I’m going to try two different versions: one with resin water, and one with real water (like a snow globe). This post shows the first steps of the resin version.

I’m using a glass dome with a cork base from Alpha Stamps for the bottle. I would have preferred something with a flat top, and almost used a corked glass bottle instead, but decided against it because the skinny neck would have prevented me from fitting a castle and gravel inside. The big cork on the dome will make a good base.

The castle charm is also from Alpha Stamps. I snipped off the ring and sanded the nubs off with a file. I washed the charm with soap and water, and then painted it with gesso.

I didn’t want to use water-based paint, especially for the snow globe version, so I dug out these model paints leftover from the one and only time I tried to build a model car. (It didn’t go well.) They’re about nineteen years old, so I’m impressed the paint is still good!

Here it is after the first coat. Later I touched up where the black went outside of the lines.

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