Crystal Light DIY (Patreon)

So today I wanna share a lil side project with you which I made for my boyfriends birthday in the end of October.




I growed a crystal with the help of Alum Powder. I took a stone with a ruff texture, covered it in glue and sprinkled it with alum powder. Let dry.




Then I brought some water to boil and made a sloution with alumn. You can tell the solution is saturated when the alum stops desolving.
Take a beaker, put the stone in it and fill in the alum solution but make sure to use a heat prooven dish and try not to wash the glue off the stone while pooring the water in.



After a few hours the stone is covered in a layer of crystals. Let it sit over night and you have bigger crystals. You can let it sit even longer but beware... The crystals will also form on the ground. If you like you can repeat the whole process. Gently taking out the stone. The crystals can be quite fragile, so be gentle. You can reuse the waterand the other crystals you dont want, crush them (omg it hurts to say that if you watched Steven Universe 😥) and reuse em for a new saturated solution.
Repeat as often as you like, but I must admit smaller alum crystals do look very neat and bigger crystals will become a cube shaped cluster. At least in my attempt.



In the end I fixated the crystal with a glossy vernis since the crystals will start to fall apart after a while I was told by my chemist friend.
Eventualy I made a silicone mold of the crystal and made a resin copy of it.
Carved a base out of styrofoam, pulled out a lil hole in the middle of the base, burned the surface of the base to get rid of the typical bumpy look of it and painted it black, gave it a dry brushing with bronce acrylic paint afterwards and put a lil LED light into the socket which runs by battery and have a remote.

Done... Phew. I hope you guys like the idea and if you try to grow your own crystals, show me the results. Alum powder is a salt you can purchase at drug stores but in america also in normal stores in the spices section since it's used to pickel things afaik...

Hope my boyfriend likes it...

Love
Matthias