If you’re someone who doesn’t pay much attention to trends, you may be wondering why resin art, in its many forms, has started to show up everywhere. Now, you can find it in shops, as decor in houses, in the form of jewelry, and so on. Resin art became the new trendy buzzword somewhere between May and June of the year 2020 based on Google trends. Why? We are going to explore the full reason why in more detail below, but the short answer is social media, particularly TikTok. Combine this with the fact that most of the world was in lockdown, bored, and looking for new hobbies or a new stream of income, and viola – a new trend was born.
Natural Resin Art
Actually, resin just got a revamp in terms of popularity since resin art has been around for centuries. You’ve surely seen bugs or flowers trapped in amber that people like to wear as rings, necklace pendants, key chains, and so on. In your life, chances are that you have likely seen fresh, gooey amber dripping from a tree in person. That is natural resin.
It’s produced from the tree and due to its sticky and thick consistency, it has the power to trap insects and preserve their dead bodies without them decomposing. As it solidifies, the amber becomes a hard slide while still remaining transparent; meaning that whatever little creature is trapped in the amber remains clearly visible. In that sense, amber was behaving similarly to a jewel or gemstone.
Amber jewelry and art have been around for many, many years (12000 BC); our need to embellish and decorate ourselves with shiny, interesting things hasn’t really changed much. Different cultures would tie different meanings to wearing amber creations, as well as amber itself. Most of the time, this natural resin would also be important for rituals, and ceremonies. It was considered to have magical powers. Historically, some cultures also stored their wealth in amber. Other cultures saw amber as an omen of protection.
Epoxy resin
However, the type of resin that became a trend again isn’t amber or any kind of natural resin. It’s a type of chemical resin that is pretty young, in comparison to amber. This chemical resin, also known as epoxy resin, was invented between 1930 and 1940. It’s a combination of resin and a hardener and it essentially acts like an adhesive.
Unlike polyester resins (which were invented in the late 19th century), the epoxy resin would have a gorgeous, transparent finish when it dried – making it ideal for jewelry. Polyester resin would dry way too quickly, it had a strong, chemical smell that would linger, and its surface would become way too sturdy. Epoxy was simply prettier, easier to use, and easier to manipulate and create art with.
Trending: Resin Art
Now that we understand the history of how epoxy resin art came to be, we’re going to dive into why it became so trendy again in the past few years. When looking at Google’s data and search statistics, the terms resin, resin art, resin art DIY, and questions such as “how to make resin art”, and “how to make resin jewelry” start spiking upwards with a big jump. The answer to this spike in popularity is viral, fun-looking resin art-making videos on TikTok. As previously stated, most of the world was in lockdown and everybody was desperately looking for something fun and interesting to do.
Expensive & complicated hobby
Some TikTok videos displayed creating epoxy resin jewelry as a lucrative side hustle, while in reality, it wasn’t exactly a “cheap” nor an extremely easy hobby. Let’s be realistic, how many hobbies did you try to pick up during lockdown that you ended up never looking at, let alone touching again? We humans can be silly sometimes. There is an unexplainable impulse to immediately drop a new activity or interest if we’re not fantastic at it right away.
There were supply issues as well since nothing was really functioning normally during the first year of the pandemic. If you wanted to create epoxy resin art, you were likely left with no other choice than to buy the more expensive options, since they either had fewer shipping problems or were longer available on online shopping websites.
Resin art was, surprising to some, the most popular in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada during this time. This can be explained by the manufacturing of epoxy, export and import restrictions with certain countries, as well as exporting issues that were caused due to the pandemic.
The Asia Pacific region produces about 60-65% of the total production market of epoxy resin, with China producing a bit less than 40% of it. Even before the pandemic, China struggled with export bans, which were only amplified even more in 2020. This all resulted in creating resin art being a more complicated process than you would anticipate while watching DIY resin art TikToks.
Safety, precautions & bio-resin
Another spike in popularity happened when environmentalists started voicing their concerns on TikTok in regards to how safe using epoxy resin is, as well as the damaging effects that it can have on both the body and the environment. People noted how safety instructions were often lacking or non-existent when getting their hands on epoxy resin, which resulted in injury or harm to their health.
Hardened epoxy resin isn’t toxic, but inhaling it and it coming into contact with bare skin is dangerous. TikTok’s of people with burned hands or severe coughing started appearing more and more. Epoxy is damaging to the environment when it comes into contact with water streams, like, for example, when you pour it down your sink. Bio-resin exists, which isn’t toxic nor harmful to the environment – however bio-resin didn’t get nearly as many views or hype as epoxy resin.
Resin Art, Is It For You?
With epoxy resin, you can create a bunch of beautiful items, art pieces, and so on. It can be used for paintings, and it can be a really fun medium to explore if you have the financial means, patience and if you stick to the safety precautions. You might not be good at it right away, but that’s completely normal.
You just need to be mentally okay with cutting your losses and not looking back if it doesn’t work out the way you hoped to. Sadly, most fun things in life cost money; and it often costs more money than it should. Is it always worth it? No. But that doesn’t mean that you should stop trying new, potentially fun things.
Apart from painting and creating necklace pendants and earrings with epoxy, there was a big trend in creating fancy epoxy wood cutting boards, epoxy serving boards, and other handmade resin crafts. People really liked the look of mixing wood and an almost marble-like surface.
Some people were so in love with epoxy that they started pouring it on almost everything – their living room floor, garage floors, wooden countertops, metal trays, tables, bowls, coasters, glasses… You name it! Some of it looks great, and some of it looks tacky. But hey, to each their own.
All in all, epoxy resin can be used to create some stunning and unique-looking art pieces. Just remember to stay patient, stick to the safety precautions, and try to relax a bit and actually have fun with your newfound creative outlet.