Hi Jim, thanks for the kind comments. The mold is a small plastic container with a hinged lid - I bought 6 of them for less than a dollar at a place in Sydney called "Reverse Garbage". RG basically picks up stuff from Sydney businesses for free and recycles them back into the community at a small charge, saving heaps of landfill. I have been able to buy a LOT of great stuff there for next to nothing, including scraps of timber to learn turning on. I joined two pieces of 2 inch pine together to form a right angle that I could put in the mold to begin with so I didn't blow all my resin on the first couple of casts - this brought the yield down from about 6 pens to 3 from each cast.
I agree that it should have been more blue - some of that is the photography, but I think that Ill need to use more liquid pigment next time to give it more body. Also the orange mold probably makes the resin look more opaque than it actually was.
Thanks
Jus
] Otherwise it looks great. I haven't had the desire to get into pouring yet.[