This has to be one of the hardest challenges I have had over the last 5-8 years, embedding images consistently into durable objects. Consistently is the linchpin here as I've gotten on piece to work here or there, but always find a way to confuse the products and process to where it doesn't repeat itself. The exposure to the chemicals like Epoxy and polyester resins don't necessarily help my efforts, but they keep me confused enough that I just keep trying. I don't consider it passion, so much as surprising that I haven't settled on a process after so much time. Admittedly I keep raising the bar on my standards and switching materials in order to get a maximum effect at a reasonable cost. As the learning curve for the materials I am using keeps me switching things it just takes more time than I have to get to a logical conclusion with a final product. Ifeel like I am my a Research and Development department for my company, but at the same time I have to run my business and keep my wife and 3 kids happy.
Today's point is that I got one piece to work on something that almost resembles a product. I used Epoxy resin, pigmented with Fillite and Iron Steel atomized powder, with digital print and a back coating of gold that almost looks like a true gold foil, but it was a mixed bronzing powder with a basic Acrylic medium. The bond to the epoxy was 100% and the image is as embeded as it could be, not a sticker or laminate, but a bonded flush 2-color image that bleeds into the black epoxy. I don't think this one is water proof, so I still have a ways to go, but as I previously noted, this ain't easy.
The funny thing is that the back of this small piece, an ipod shaped christmas ornament, looks better on the back than the front. Since I have so little faith in any of these samples being an actual product, I often play with the casting and do something stupid to make sure it won't look complete. This technique is the genius of my creativity as these incidental mistakes and modifications are always the way a new generation of the process is born. My latest silliness has me sticking left-over images on the back of the epoxy while it is setting up. The problems I used to have with air bubbles have vanished in my newest test, which is why I stopped applying images to the top of epoxy in the past, and these images actually look better in some ways than the images that I am doing all this work to make appear embedded.
The problem with the floating images is that the tops of the image have a thin plastic veneer, which is only negative because I know it is there. The average person would not care or give a shit about this, in fact, they may like the shiny coat that the plastic surface provides. The fact that I hate this so much is all the more reason why it is probably the right way to go. If I keep in mind that the idea is to have a reasonably priced item that is consistently easy to make then I have found it with this technique, I just don't want to admit it, but it is true. My last batch of castings all have a back image and it was hardly any more work at all. I've started embedding magnets with these castings so the a magent will be now be embedded into the iphone shape too, but I have to wait until tomorrow to see if it bonds adequetly or if it sinks into the epoxy and gets lost in the resin. Still it may be funny if there is a magnet embedded below the surface and it may even help a second magnet stay on to the piece too. Manyana.
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