Last weekend, I went for a morning walk in my neighbourhood. It was a beautiful morning. As I was walking and passing by, in the front yard of a neighbouring house, I saw a beautiful monarch butterfly that seemed to be flying around and sitting for a long time on coneflowers.
I thought, this is a great opportunity to take a photo, as not every day do we see a butterfly that does not fly away. Here is the photo that I took.
This experience and photograph inspired me to choose the theme of monarch butterflies and flowers for my new batch of resin coasters.
The visual elements in this piece are paper cutouts that I made myself using regular paper and crepe paper for the greens. The butterflies are painted with pen and pastels.
I have shared my layered resin craft-making process in detail in a previous post related to “Waterlilies and Turtles”.
For the background paper layer, which would be the top layer while filling the silicone molds, as per the steps shared in a previous post, I used a hand painted layer with pastels which was glazed with Liquitex High Gloss Varnish, so that the paint particles would not diffuse into the resin.
I prepared the resin using a 1:1 ratio of epoxy resin and hardener that are fully mixed to reach a homogenous cloudy mix that will clear later. I used the Clear Cast Epoxy brand that I purchased from the Michaels Arts and Crafts store. The amount of resin to cast depends on how many molds you want to fill, or in other words, how many coasters or tiles you are planning to make.
As I also shared in my previous posts about making coasters, once the resin cures completely, I apply a high-quality clear silicone adhesive to attach a custom-cut, 3mm-thick vinyl foam layer. To ensure the final piece is perfectly gentle on your furniture, I add a premium backing of self-adhesive cork sheet. I typically source these reliable materials locally from Home Hardware or Canadian Tire, though excellent rolls of foam and adhesive cork are widely available at most hardware suppliers regardless of your location.
The 3D effect is created thanks to the sequence of arranging the visual elements. Working with epoxy resin takes a lot of patience, and sometimes, for each casting, to get the desired effect, one might need to wait several hours.
Something that I am happy with in this piece, compared to my previous coasters, is that I left more blank space or breathing room instead of filling every corner of the work with a visual element.
Working with resin is very time-dependent, as the material has different physical properties that vary over time.
Getting rid of the stress of not missing the proper time and taking into account all the details related to the epoxy to focus on the artwork and make a better composition requires experience with this material. After casting so many coasters, I now feel more comfortable with using epoxy resin. This allows me to make more convincing visual compositions.
I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post. Please visit again soon for the upcoming articles.
Cheers!
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