I’m that girl who wants to have my tea or my snack on the bed with me. Not on the bedside table, but also not resting in my lap or in a bundle of blankets hoping nothing will spill. Safely on the bed. No crumbs. No spills. No balancing my glass of wine on one of the flat corners of my laptop while on Netflix.
I’m sure we’re all that person at times, honestly. And I love those little trays that you can carry things around on, lay on the bed, bring to the bath – they’re a convenient, portable, flat, multi-purpose surface! Trouble is, the super cute ones are way too pricey for words, and the affordable ones are dull, tacky, don’t have handles, or some other nonsense. The best thing about the cheap trays though once you find a size you like is that you can totally up-cycle it!
I would recommend going to the thrift store and hunting for a tray, I promise theres lots. I found a wooden one with a cute but corny snowman family on it for probably $2. I covered it in white paint (from here you can definitely go ahead and paint it fully for an awesome custom tray, but keep reading if you want something cooler!) and let that dry completely before I decided what to do to decorate my tray.
Resin craft are so neat and pump out professional looking creations, and i’ve wanted to get into jewellery and accessory making for a while now, but I haven’t been able to order any silicone moulds online for sometime (due to personal concerns of imported goods during the pandemic). I had some resin at home and a TON of dry pressed flowers i’d been collecting over the years, so I decided to get to work.
What You’ll Need
- Clean and dry tray of your choice. Make sure there is no dust or hair because once the resin sets, that stuff stays
- Envirotex Lite Resin (or any other brand, but i chose this stuff because it came with a bottle of resin and a bottle of hardener
- A measuring cup
- Popsicle stick for mixing the resin
- Latex gloves to protect your hands
- Dried flowers, glitter, or whatever else you want to include in your design – just remember that it should be pretty flat so that you don’t have to do another coat of resin
The amount of resin you use depends on the size of your tray – so make sure to read the instructions that came with whatever product you’ll be using. Usually you will want to mirror the amount of hardener and resin, and mix it well because they have different levels of density.
Once you situate your flowers and other items onto the flat surface and your resin is mixed, you can just go ahead and pour the resin on slowly, making sure to distribute it evenly. if you need to mix up a little more thats okay, but keep in mind the resin will expand to cover the flat level surface. If there are any air bubbles you can get rid of them tyopcally by using a heat gun if thats available to you, but exhaling hot air onto the surface worked perfectly for me!
It will take 24 hours for this project to dry, and once it does its ready for whatever you could possibly need it for! I loved doing this project because it familiarized be with using resin on a low risk and not that intimidating task, so now I feel better equipped to tackle the jewellery and coasters in my resin craft future! This can make an excellent gift or you can use it for keeping your items together on your bed like pencils, tea, rocks, cat treats, whatever it is you require an aesthetic surface for. I hope some of you try this idea at home because I don’t doubt that you’ll be very proud of the results.
– Tams
Only Sunny 