I’m so behind on updating this site, but I promise I’ve been busy! For Halloween last year, I made pumpkins for my entire team at work. They took forever because I had to cut strips of construction paper and glue them into toilet paper rolls. This meant asking my folks to save theirs as well as having to go get even more paper. lol. Then I cut out green tops and glued those in, and taped the bottoms shut. Then I filled them with Halloween glitter (including spiderwebs and spiders and coke-fine glitter). I stuck a Smarties and Aero fun size snack in there, and dumped more glitter in, and put a Mars and Snickers one in on top of those. The first two snacks came out fine, but the Smarties box got caught on the green construction paper, leaving folks to dump the insides out. Glitter. Was. EVERYWHERE! I loved it. I even got a coworker’s husband as bycatch – she instructed him not to move the pumpkin and she’d deal with it when she got home, but he didn’t listen and it puked glitter and spiders and spiderwebs alll in the back of the car. They eventually traded that car in as-is, and while logically I realize it wasn’t because it was less work to trade it in than clean it, but I totally want to think that so I will.

Then I made a cute little watercolour card.

I decided to make resin coasters for a housewarming present for friends who just bought a house. I laid out all my supplies (resin, silicone moulds, sand, transparent and opaque dyes, glitter, paint, stir sticks, cups, my Martha Stewart heat gun, gloves, a table cloth, kitchen scale, and smock. I mixed up the equal parts resin and hardener, and mixed in some gold glitter and real sand) and got to work. I’m not nearly patient enough with this craft, and need to learn how to slow down and let things sit a bit first, but that’s a lesson for another day!

I mixed up some resin with sand and a bunch of glitter, and poured it into the mould. I should have let that sit for several hours, but of course I didn’t. Then I mixed up two batches of resin with opaque blue dye and paint, and one with white paint. I layered it into the mould and used a heat gun to mix it up and create the lace effect I was after. I was pleased enough with how it looked on the back, but realized the mould wasn’t full, and I wanted to add more resin.

I let it harden over two days, and then couldn’t leave well enough alone. I mixed up some resin with transparent blue and green dyes, and a batch of resin with white paint. I should have used transparent white dye instead of opaque white paint, because it obliterated any lace work I had achieved. Whoops.

I used the rest of the resin to make two little trinket boxes with the same ocean theme. I still need to trim the raw edges, but then they will be done.

I was happy enough with the end result, and will probably make another set of three coasters for a full set of six. This time, I will try letting it dry between layers. I found the sand mixed with the surf, which is fine, but the sand is not opaque like I wanted. We’ll see what happens this weekend. They move at the end of May, so I’ve got time.