Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello. My name is Cheri, and I teach art and
craft workshops in a small country town
in Western Australia. Today, I'm going to show you
this really cool technique called the Milky Way technique. To get the look,
we're going to use epoxy resin and glitter
in our favorite colors. It's not an overly
complicated process, but it might not be
the ideal project for you if it's your first time
working with epoxy resin. But if you do have a bit
of an understanding of how epoxy resin
behaves and moves, then let's get started.
2. Tools and materials: Epoxy resin is quite toxic, so there are a few must
haves that you need in order to protect your workspace
and to keep yourself safe. First of all, I strongly
recommend a plastic table cover. I usually double mine up or more for a bit
extra protection. Resin will peel right off
a plastic table cover, but it won't peel
off your table. You'll need several
pairs of gloves. I use latex gloves because that's what's readily
available where I am. But if you can get a
hold of nitril gloves, they'll give you much
better protection. They are a lot
stronger and they give you better protection
against chemicals. You'll need good
breathing protection, so you'll need to get
yourself a respirator. If you head down to your
local hardware shop and to see what they recommend
for indoor painting, that should be suitable for
working with resin as well. You'll need eye
protection, so get yourself a pair of
safety glasses. And finally, you'll
want an apron or something similar to
protect your clothes. If you get resin on your
clothes or any textiles, it's not coming out,
either wet or dry. However, the resin won't
set for about 24 hours. So it's not coming
out while it's wet, but while it's tacky, it will transfer
to other textiles. So if you sit on your couch, you'll transfer to your couch, if you hug your kids, it will transfer
to their clothes, and you don't want any of that. Best just to throw on an apron that you can remove
when you're done. So the most important
tool that you're going to need to do this project
is a mug turner. Unfortunately,
there's not really any way that you can
do it without one. So a mug turner is
an electronic device with this foam fitting
at the end of it. So you jam your mug on there and the foam expands to whatever
the size of the mug is. So then when you turn it on, I don't know how well it's showing up in the video, but it turns. So then when you pour
the resin onto the mug, it doesn't all drip off the mug. So it will kind of
rotate around the mug, but because the mug is
constantly turning, it will actually
stay on the mug. You'll also need a heat gun. You'll need a good supply
of baby wipes or wet wipes. You'll need some cups in a
couple of different sizes. Ideally, you'll have
measures on the cups. These ones that I'm
using for this project. Now we're only mixing small
amounts of resin at a time, so we only need small cups. They don't have measures,
but you can see they've got lines built into
the design of the cup. When I'm measuring out
my one to one resin, I can just fill it up
to one or another of these lines in both cups, and I know that I've got
equal parts of each resin. That's super handy,
and you can see the lines on the inside
of the cup as well. Now, you also want some
slightly bigger cups. Once you've measured out your
resin and your hardener, you'll pour both of
those into a third cup, so that's what these
bigger cups are for. And you'll need some stirs. So either some wooden stirs that you already have in
your craft stash, or you can buy a
reusable silicon stir. So to make your
travel mug today, you will obviously
need a travel mug. So this is a white stainless steel travel mug
that I picked up for quite a reasonable price from
sublimation supply stores, and it's very,
very good quality. My finished mugs are
not only beautiful, but they work really, really well. We need some resin. I'm using resin one to one epoxy resin, an
Australian brand. So epoxy resin comes in two parts that
are mixed together. You've got the resin or part A, and you've got the
hard Nar or part B. Mine is a one to one resin, which is ideal for these surface level
pares that we're doing. One to one just means that I mix equal parts of
part A and part B. If you're brand new to resin and you're not using
it for deep pares, I strongly recommend you
look for a one to one resin, simply because it's a
lot easier to work out. The alternatives would be two to one or three
to one resin. You've got to work out
two parts of one to one part of the
other or three parts of one to one part of the other. Try to avoid our favorite
discount websites and buy your resin from
a reputable retailer. It's toxic enough without anyone cutting corners
to make it cheaper. Now, if we turn around, you
can see the resin is clear, and it's quite runny and thin. Was the hardener is a
little bit more yellow, and it's quite a lot thicker. It's like a glucose gel. Okay. You also need some
resin pigment. At a minimum, you'll
need some white. You may want to use some other colors light colors as well. I'm using a pigment paste. That's just my
personal preference. But you can use powders
for this. That's fine. I'll also be using a
champagne colored paste, which is like a
ser creamy color. But you might want to use a
shimmery white or a light pink or light gold
or color like that. Then finally, we'll
be using glitter. Pick four colors that you like at any colors
that you want. I personally like to use a coarse glitter and a fine
glitter in the same color. If I pick one that doesn't have paint and resinol
over the outside, you can see that's
quite a coarse glitter. You can see how chunky that is. I like to pair up a chunky with a fine glitter
because the chunky, you get to see the glitter, whereas the fine just fills
in all the gaps in between.
3. First resin layer: So we're going to
need to rough up this very smooth surface in order to make sure the
resin sticks properly. So Grab some sandpaper. Any sandpaper you have, it
doesn't matter what grit, and just give it a good old rub right around the whole
exterior surface of the mug. When you finish, grab a
wipe or a paper towel or a rag and give it a good old squared of
isopropal alcohol, and then give that surface a
really thorough clean down, get rid of all of the dust. Mix up a small amount of resin. You only need enough
resin to coat the mug. I'm probably only going to mix about 30 mills or 40
mills of resin here. If you're new to resin, it's really important
that you remember that it's really important
to maintain the ratios. I'm using a one to one resin, which means that I use equal
parts of resin and hardener. We always measure out
the resin one cup, the hardener in another cup, and then we transfer
both of those to a third cup rather
than cup A into cup B. Now, I live in a
remote country town. It's not actually
easy for me to find small measuring cups with the
measurements on the side. What I like about these
cups is they have a number of grooves
built into them. I can pull my resin to one
or another of these grooves, and I can always make
sure that I've got the same amount of
resin and harder. Now I hope you don't
mind. I'm just going to speed some of
this up a little bit. I think you really don't need
to see me struggling with getting the resin out of
the cup at normal speed. So now the stirring begins. So we need to mix this for
a good slid 3 minutes, and that's a proper
time 3 minutes. That's that's near
enough 3 minutes. Now, once again,
this is something that you do not need
to see in real time. So I'm going to speed
it up a little bit, but take my word for it. I stirred for 3 minutes. Make sure that throughout
that 3 minutes, you're taking the time
to scrape against the side of the cup and
scrape against the bottom, and you're really getting all the resin from every part of the cup all mixed in well. Now with your tumbler
securely on your mug turner, we are going to give that mug its first
coat of clear resin. I'm going to start by drizzling the resin over the tumbler, distributing it reasonably
equally around the mug. I'll then go in with
my gloved hand and gently just start spreading it right across the
surface of the mug. If I need to drizzle
on more resin, I'll do that wherever it's thin or wherever there are gaps. And then I'll spread that resin out with my gloved hand as well. So I'll repeat those two steps
as many times as I need, the drizzling and the spreading. As you can see, I'm making sure to get the base of
the mug as well. I want the whole thing
covered in resin. I'm now going to come
in with a heat gun, and I'm going to
give the whole thing a light blast all
the way around. Now, this is going to
help with a few things. First, it's going to get rid of any air bubbles that
have been mixed in with the resin and give me a
nice, smooth, glassy finish. That's not super important
on this first layer, but it will be for
your outside layer. Second, it's going to help thin the resin and help
it move around. If there are parts
where the resin is thin and there are other parts where the
resin is thicker, it's going to even
it out a little bit. However, if you keep the heat
going on it for too long, then it's going to really thin the resin out
and it's going to start moving and dripping, and you're going to lose a lot of the resin that
you've put on your mug. So keep the heat gun on for
the smallest amount of time possible to get
rid of the bubbles and to even out the surface. And don't forget the bottom. Now that glove is
covered in resin. I'm going to get rid of
that, and I'm going to put on a nice clean glove. Now, grab the first of
your four glitter colors, and we're just generally
going to sprinkle it on in a diagonal line as
the mug is turning. Now, I picked a
terrible color as far as the video goes for
my first glitter color, and I'm really, really
sorry about that. This is in real life. It's a beautiful
holographic white, but it doesn't show up
very well on camera. So for each of my colors, I'm using two different
types of glitter. I'm going in first
with a coarse glitter, like the bigger flakes, and then I'm going
over the top of it with a very fine glitter, and I'm doing that for
each of my colors. Moving on to my
second color now, and I'm going to
repeat the process. I'm going to put a diagonal line just to the right of
that first glitter line. And once again, this is probably something that
once you've seen at once, you don't need to see repeatedly for all four colors
in real time. So I'll just speed
it up just a touch. I'm just going back
in one more time with my first color with
that holographic white, just to fill in a
couple of gaps. And that's the first layer finished and does
not look amazing. Before we can move on,
we need to give this a good 24 hours to
let the resin set.
4. Second resin layer: For our second layer of resin, we're going to need
enough clear resin to do a full coat on
the tumbler again. But we're also going to
need a little bit ext, just a small amount with
a bit of color in it. I'm only going to be
using very subtle colors. So for mine, I'm using white
and a champagne color. We're only needing a small
amount of resin for the color, so I'm only putting the tiniest
touch of color in each. Oops. Next I'm going to mix
up the clear resin. I don't think you need
to see me do that again. The process is exactly the same as for the first
layer of resin. I'm going to out
just a tiny amount in with the white color
and the champagne color, and the rest of the
clear I'm going to use for the outside
of the tumbler. Now the first stage of
this second layer of resin is exactly like what we did
before we put the glitter on. Just drizzling clear resin
all over the whole tumbler, once we've got a good
amount of resin there, then we're going to spread the resin with our gloved hand. And don't forget the
base of the timber. Once you've completely covered
the tumbler with resin, and you filled in all the gaps. Grab your heat gun. Giving
the tumbler a bit of a blast and taking care
not to overheat the resin. You don't want it to thin too, but you do want that
nice glassy finish. You want to get rid
of the bubbles, and you want to smooth out
any thick and thin parts. I just noticed there
are a few gaps in mind. There are
a few thin spots. So I just added a little
bit more clear resin just to make sure the whole
thing was covered properly. Now, grab your colored resin, and we're just going to drizzle very small amounts
over the clear resin. I'm overdoing it a bit
here and actually ended up wiping some of this
off a little bit later. I'd recommend that you drizzle on less cold resin
than I'm doing here. You can then use your stick or you can use your
gloved finger, just to soften up those
drizzles a little bit. Then finally, grab your heat gun to soften up those lines even further and to get rid of the bubbles from
the colored resin that you've just added. Remember, this resin will
continue to move a little bit, so it won't be perfectly
exactly as it is right now. It will continue to move. But once you're
generally happy with it, then turn your heat gun
off and leave it on your mu t for another 24 hours to set
properly. And then you finished.
5. Your project: Thank you for joining me
today for this class, and I really hope you
enjoyed the lesson. You have all the
knowledge you need now to create your own glitter
and resin tumbler, using the Milky way technique. And when you've done it,
please take a photo of your tumbler and upload it
to the project gallery. I can't wait to see what kinds of color combinations we get. And if you did enjoy this class, please leave me a review and head over to my
profile and click Follow so that you
get a notification anytime upload a
class in future. Have a wonderful
rest of your day, and I'll see you again soon.
Sheree Lowe, Artist and instructor
