Last year my parents bought an Advent Box for my daughter from a charity shop, which was really lovely, and it is an amazing box, and I spent the next couple of weeks scrabbling together miniature toys and treats to fill most of the 24 boxes. This year I thought I would give myself a head-start and make some things that could go in.

A while ago I purchased some Pebeo Crystal Resin for casting, and haven’t found a project to experiment with it. I thought this could be really nice to make some Christmas jewels for the Advent Calendar, using silicone ice cube molds.

It’s a two-part resin that fully hardens after about 24 hours. I didn’t realise how messy it would get, which was all a bit stressful, and I had no idea how it would respond to the Pebeo paints I used. I also put glitter in some (she loves glitter) and also a couple of random bits of stuff – a thistle head and a snail shell for example.

I am not sure if I did something wrong, but after a week, many of the pieces were still tacky to the touch. Maybe they were too big, or maybe mixing in the Pebeo paints was a bad idea, or maybe it was too for the resin to cure.

Here are the handful of successful ones, and I’ll give the others some more time in the hope that they might harden up gradually.