Bottle Cap Craft Tray

I don't like to craft at a table or a desk, much to the detriment of my couch. So, I decided to make a crafting tray to hold all of the bits and bobs that I need while working on my projects. 

I started with a dusty wooden tray that I bought at a thrift store. I re-glued the loose sides and sanded down the whole tray to make the wear more even.

 I then added some conditioning stain and sealed the whole thing with a spray sealer and let it dry overnight.

I made some origami boxes out of scrapbooking paper to hold beads at the top of the tray. I didn't measure these  and lived to regret it later. 

Now for the bottle caps! Despite the valiant efforts of family and friends, I didn't have enough beer caps "saved" to cover the entire area I needed. I pulled out the edges of each cap with pliers to make them larger. This also had the added benefit of making the resin pour I do later much shallower since they are now much shorter.

I've glued in the boxes that fit. (The pliers and cat brush are holding the corner of one of the boxes down while the glue dries.) The first row of bottle caps are glued down and the rest only took about 10 minutes to add. 

All of the bottle caps in and waiting for the pour!

Mother's Day Tea Cups

I like to give crafty gifts whenever I can. This is a set of tea-cups I did for Mother's Day this year for all of the wonderful moms in my life. (And I may have saved two of them for me.)

I bought these six teacups from a thrift store for about a buck a piece. I tried to find cups with designs on the inside that I could embellish.

I also bought some cheap silk and plastic flowers at the thrift store for a whopping 2 bucks. I ended up getting a giant bag of materials to use for future projects beyond what I needed for this one. 

I propped up the cups on pieces of paper to glue in the flowers with craft glue and to hold them when I seal them later one. I also added beads and charms to each of the cups. I let these dry overnight before glazing them with resin the next day. This sealed in all of the items in each of the cups, making them weatherproof and adhering them to the cup. I let them cure for 24 hours in a warm place.

Once the cups were cured, I added chain to each of the handles. Because of the way I propped them during gluing, when they hang, the flowers will be tumbling out of the bottom of the cups. Now these can be hung in a window, in a garden or from a ceiling hook.

Penny Countertop

How's this for a first post?

I have gathered something like a gallon of pennies throughout the years. They're pretty unusable as currency and I was too lazy to bring them to a bank. I was also cursed with two rather ugly bathroom counters of a mustard yellow persuasion and have been looking for an inexpensive way to redo them. Penny counter top tutorials pictures are everywhere on the internet, so I decided to tackle it.

I started by sorting out my pennies into light and dark hues. I have plans for these later, but if you want to go with a randomized look, you can skip this step. 

Time to tackle the counter itself. 

Here's the counter in the master bathroom. This is about as good as it ever looks, which isn't saying much. (Bonus kitty photobomb.)

I taped off the entire area that I was going to be painting/resin-ing. This made clean-up super easy at the end of the project and left my walls as clean as when I started.

I painted the entire counter top with black acrylic paint and then used a clear coat of spray sealer and let dry overnight. It's important to let everything dry in between steps. If you add pennies to the paint too soon, it is likely to pull up and peel. Touching up the ripped paint is a pain. I used a basic decoupage medium to hold the pennies in place while I was adding to the rows. I anchored the first row with a stronger craft glue.

I wanted to create a border on the counter top, but didn't want it to be too rigid because of the variations in the pennies. I swapped out colors between the lighter and darker portions occasionally. I worked in rows to make sure I could match up the layout of pennies on either side. From start to finish adding the pennies to the top of the counter took about an hour.

The top of the counter complete. I added pennies to the edge and glued them into place. Use a stronger glue for this portion than the top as these pennies have a tendency to slide down. I used painter's tape to hold them up while drying.
This is after the resin pour. I used Envirotex Lite 2-part resin for this. It is designed specifically as a varnish/sealer and self-levels after pouring. Make sure to measure and mix your resin carefully as messing up either the ratio or leaving parts unmixed can result in your counter not curing appropriately. (And then you get to buy a new counter.)

Here is a final shot of the surface of the counter as it starts to cure. You're going to have a lot of bubbles in the resin as your pennies settle and from the mixing. Blowing over the surface of the resin with a straw causes the bubbles to rise up and pop at the surface, making your resin crystal clear.
The counter needs at least 24 hours to soft cure and up to 72 to for a hard cure. Avoid putting objects on the counter before 72 hours, but you can touch it as soon as it is soft cured.