No better way to accessorize yourself than with your life accessory....child.significant other.pet. When your watercolor paint canisters are running out; reuse them as a mold for an inventive dependant-pendant.

Materials Needed:

Watercolor tray: pendant form

Epoxy: Base material

CA glue: top coat

Acrylic paint: background color

Construction paper: to establish the silhouette

Image: to trace/cut

Toothpicks: mix the epoxy, help place the silhouette

Sandpaper: 60-1000 (smooth and polish)

Eye Pins: 1" long eye hooks/needles to attach to pendant and to place on necklace...Hobby Lobby

Tools Needed:

X-acto knife: cutting silhouette and to potentially release your pendant

Drill: create hole for eye pin

Drill bit: size of eye pin. 3/64"

Step 1: Silhouette: Image / Cut

Locate an image for the pendant and print it to fit into a watercolor dish. *mine had to be printed at 4% of the original size. This is something you can adjust when you print. Tape the printed image to a piece of construction paper or other type of paper. Using a SHARP x-acto know cut out the image. *Personally, I cut it about 20 times before I captured the essence of my son's profile. After that I would scan, photocopy, or take a picture of the silhouette. Because if the next step fails you can easily print the silhouette and cut that out of a new piece instead of recutting the printed image. I did this as I was exploring materials and the +/- of each.

Set aside until your first layer of epoxy has dried.

Step 2: Pendant: 1st Layer

Taking a set of watercolors remove or cut out of the color dishes to act as your pendant mold. Clean out the remaining paint with water. Taking your two part epoxy and mix even amount of Part A & B and a quarter size of white paint all together. I used a toothpick and seemed to work well as a scoop too. You need enough epoxy to fill roughly half of the dish/mold. The more white paint you add the greatly likelihood it will stay white. When the epoxy dries it often gives a yellow hue rather than a pure white. I enjoyed the yellow hue, due to the vintage look it presented. Once mixed load it into the dish/mold half way up the side. The epoxy I used was 5-minute...so give it some time to dry.

Step 3: Pendant: 2nd Layer

After the first layer has dried place your cut silhouette into the dish. Using a needle position it the way you desire. I am giving you two different images of placement to see how the amount of white paint in the first layer affects the resulting color.

*This next part is where I have had most of my issues (BUBBLES)

Mix up another amount of two part epoxy and pour into the remaining available space in the mold (without paint). When mixing epoxy be gentle or you will create a lot of bubbles. This is visible in the last image with this step. The bubbles give another vintage look altogether, but was not appreciated by me.

The other way of going about this it to pour CA glue into the remaining available space of the mold. However, this will take some time to dry.

(please, send other options to improve this process)

Step 4: Pendant: Sanding

This step is only if you need it. When you remove the pendant out of the dish after it dries, there potentially might be a sharp ridge around the edge. Knock it down with sandpaper. I started with 180 grit. This created scratches on the surface. So with wet/dry paper I went down in grit to 1000 to establish a smooth clean look.

Sanding may also be done to remove bubbles that floated to the surface as you may have pounded the table to convince them to rise.

Step 5: Pendant: Adding Eye Pins

Taking 3/32 drill bit in a drill or a Dremel and drill a hole in the top of the pendant to receive the eye pins. Be careful you are drilling straight down or you might come through the front of your design. Rule of thumb: drill into the white layer only. Mixing up a little more epoxy push some into the hole with a toothpick or the eye pin. Then stick the eye pin in and be sure the eye is going the right direction.

* I had to cut my eye pin down due to the pin being to long...also, as a precaution I decided to sand the pin portion of the eye pin to guarantee adhesion.

Let dry and add to a charm bracelet or a necklace and enjoy your dependant-pendant.