Adventures with Resin

Puppy serving tray

Well we had much better luck with chemistry with this month's craft day.  (As apposed to our failed soap making attempt.)  On the docket was a project that we found the french craft magazine, that I found at the airport, Kelly mentioned in her button jolly roger post.  Basically it was instructions in how to make a serving tray with buttons encased in resin on the surface.  But we didn't stop at buttons.  We used everything from sand to shells to wine corks.  Here's how we did it.  We all had our trays already painted, well all except for me.  So I hung my tray from the tree outside and sprayed it with a layer of white and then teal spray paint.

(Oh and to boot I also ran out of paint 3/4 of the way through and had to run to my friendly local Menards.  Good thing my girls are patient.)

So as I was waiting for my paint to dry the other girls were hard at work gluing their goodies down on their trays.

Kelly Made these awesome jellyfish from buttons,

Laura used sand and crushed shells to make a cool wave and 

Katy went chic with a wine cork puzzle.  

Here's a couple of tips on the bottom two.  Laura used modge podge to glue down two consecutive layers of sand before pouring her shells on top.  If your wanting to do the corks try cutting them in half so they lie flat and make sure you glue them all down.  Otherwise they'll float in the poured resin.

Now the only thing left to do was wait.  Yep wait for me to finish gluing down my buttons.  Here's my tray, pre-resin.

I've never used so many buttons in a project in my life.  Trust me it took a while for me to catch up.  Kelly and Katy were even nice enough to take the dogs for a walk while I continued to glue.  Now it was time to mix our resin and start pouring.  Three big tips for pouring resin:

READ THE DIRECTIONS to make sure you mix the recipe correctly.  If not your resin might not set.

GIVE PUPPIES SOMETHING TO KEEP THEM OCCUPIED, like a bully stick or rawhide treat.  You'll want them to stay out of the way.  My dogs were more than willing to accommodate us.

MAKE SURE YOU MIX RESIN IN A WELL VENTILATED AREA.  

Its an intense odor I'm pretty positive is not good for you to inhale like we did and my house stunk like resin for two days.  Pour just enough resin to make a level surface above your doo dads.  You also want to make sure to put your tray to dry somewhere that you wont get any dirt or dust onto the surface cuz it won't come off.  So we mixed the resin with the amount of catalyst that it called for, which was alot cuz we mixed the whole container, and started pouring.  It was super helpful too for a second person to help spread the resin into the corners.

Now all that was left was to wait for the trays to dry.  They had gelled in about 30 minutes and by the next morning mine was totally solid.  Add another notch in the awesome crafting belt!

What kind of doo dads will you put in your tray?

Craft on!
Anita

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