SCHOOL IS A KILLER

AAAAAHHH!!! I have 3 weeks of college left and I'm excite but also freaking out because I have all this obnoxious work to do and only a little bit of it is actually FOR my major. All the other work is for stupid liberal arts classes where the teachers don't seem to understand that no one cares. Granted I would probably enjoy these two classes if they weren't at 8:30AM, but they ARE. So it doesn't really matter what they're about. I knew I wasn't going to learn a thing from them when I signed up, but they were the only classes that met the requirements and fit into my schedule. Ringling is retarded like that.

In a lot of ways I wish I had gone to a bigger school. Not a university, but a bigger school with more reverence for Fine Arts and their contribution to world culture. I wish I had gone to a school with enough enrolment to warrant a few different sections of each class. Most of the classes I'm taking are only one section, so that means you can either fit that one section into your schedule or you can't. If that one section doesn't work for you then you don't get to take that class. A lot of the interesting classes, like Dangerous Ideas and Ethics for Artists are held during my classes for my major. All in all Ringling College of Art and Design is never inflexible when it comes to scheduling. All classes (accept one or two of the freshmen level English classes) are 2 hours 45 minutes long, most of them are one section (I don't remember the last time there was more than one section to chose from), and most of the one section classes seem to only be held at 8:30 in the morning! I have no idea who decided this was a good idea, but I would like to personally punch them in the nose.

This Week in Resin:

In other news, I've been pouring more resin stuff! I've started on a whole bunch of littler hearts that will have stickers and insults embedded. I think the right price for them is $10-12, maybe $13-14 if they have a whole bunch of sweetness in them. I've been doing my Etsy research and I have to say I'm really disappointed in a lot of the other sellers of resin cuteness. They price their pieces WAY too high. They do this because epoxy and polyester resin are pretty mysterious and unknown. People just don't know that liquid plastic exists and they certainly don't know how much it actually costs. Let me demystify this for EVERYONE. 8 oz of resin at Michael's costs $11. That's it. I've found a gallon kit for epoxy resin for $50 online. There is NO REASON for a necklace that has maybe 60¢ worth of stickers, 50-60¢ worth of glitter and $1.30 worth of resin to cost $22 just because it's in a cute heart shape. That's ridiculous to me.

The only reason resin jewelry is expensive is because of the time that goes into making it. While creating each piece doesn't take THAT long, there's a lot of waiting that has to be done. Making a heart pendant that's just solid glitter takes at least a day and a half, maybe more. First the resin must be mixed then poured. You let that gel, and that can take all day or all night if you poured later in the day. Then you have add the eye-pin to the back of glitter resin and pour a layer of clear resin to hold the pin in place. That has to cure for several hours (depending on the temperature wherever you're pouring.) Once that's done you can pop the piece out of the mold, trim the excess off the edges and hang it from a chain. While you're doing all of this you can't really make more pieces because all your mold cavities are filled with half finished and curing pieces. That's the ONLY reason resin is expensive.

It upsets me a little to see all of these high priced resin pieces on Etsy and the Internet in general. I can really understand someone not wanting to pay $20 for a plastic pendant. I can even understand someone not wanting to spend $18 on my pieces. I started them all at $18 because I wanted to be competitive but still look serious. If i price everything at $12 I thought people might worry that there was something wrong with me or the pieces. If nothing else sells at that price I'll think seriously about bringing it down. I want to have jewelry in everyone's price range. I think anybody who likes what I'm doing is a potential customer and shouldn't I want to please them? Shouldn't I want them to feel like they're not throwing their money away?

The more I learn about resin casting the more I think most people's prices are pretty outrageous.

Anyway I'm going to be posting some more pictures to my DeviantART and I'm going to be posting a new listing to my Etsy Store sometime tonight (if I can get some homework done before it's time for yoga class that is!)

Wish me luck getting everything done!