On scraps, second lives, and why the leftover pour might be my favorite part of the work.
Every dice set I pour leaves something behind. A puddle of navy at the bottom of the mixing cup. A thin ribbon of gold that ran past the mold’s edge. A few sprigs of dried yarrow that didn’t make it into the piece I’d planned for them. For a long time, I didn’t know what to call that leftover material, except “leftover.” Now I call it Studio Charms, and it’s become one of the most honest things I make.
The myth of the scrap
There’s a story we tell about handmade goods, and it goes something like this: the maker has a vision, executes it perfectly, and what remains afterward is waste. Trimmings. Excess. The stuff that didn’t make the cut.
I don’t think that’s true, and I definitely don’t think it’s true of resin. When you mix a batch for a dice set or a coaster run, you almost always mix slightly more than you need, because running short mid-pour is its own kind of disaster. That extra resin doesn’t stop being beautiful just because it wasn’t the plan. It still catches light. It still holds a sprig of dried flower suspended exactly where I dropped it. It just wasn’t born with a destination.
A scrap is only a scrap if you decide in advance what counts as the finished thing.
What actually goes into a Studio Charm
Here’s the honest version of the process, no embellishment. After I pour a primary piece, I take whatever’s left in the cup, often only a tablespoon or two, and pour it into a small charm or keychain mold. Sometimes I add a pinch of botanical that’s left over from a different project, which means a single charm might carry lavender from one batch and a fleck of gold leaf from another. It’s a little bit of everything I worked on that day, captured in something small enough to hang from a bag clip.
The Resin
Whatever’s left in the cup after the day’s primary pour. Never mixed on purpose for a charm alone.
The Botanicals
Loose sprigs trimmed from a larger arrangement, or the last of a dried flower I’m down to a few stems of.
The Color
Whichever navy, gold, or accent pigment was already on the workbench that day. Never custom-mixed.
The Result
One of one. Once it’s cured and out of the mold, there is no second piece exactly like it, ever.
That last part is the whole point. I can make you another dice set in the same colorway if you love the one you have. I cannot make you another Studio Charm. The mold might be the same, but the moment it captured is not.
Why I don’t call them seconds
I want to be specific about something, because I think it matters: a Studio Charm is not a flawed piece. It’s not a reject, and it’s not a discount item. If a piece comes out of a mold with a bubble or a crack, that’s a different category entirely, one I handle separately, usually at a studio sale price with the issue clearly disclosed.
Studio Charms are intentional from the moment I reach for that second mold. They’re just intentional about something different than my dice sets are. A dice set is planned weeks in advance, sometimes for a specific commission. A Studio Charm is planned in the thirty seconds after I notice how much resin is left in the cup. Different timeline, same care.
Zero-waste isn’t a marketing line here. It’s just what happens when you refuse to think of anything as waste in the first place.
What this means if you’re holding one
If you’ve got a Studio Charm clipped to your keys or your dice bag, here’s what I’d want you to know: it was made on a day when I was already deep in a different project, thinking about a different customer, working toward a different deadline. And somewhere in the middle of all that, there was enough resin and enough light and enough dried flower left over to make one more small, complete thing.
That’s not nothing. In a studio where almost everything is made to order and planned in advance, the Studio Charms are the only pieces that exist purely because the material asked to become something. I just said yes.
May your rolls be ever in your favor.
— Sarah Beth