Intro to Resin Basics

1. Intro to Resin Basics: Hi, I'm Katie Krell, and this is my intro to resin basics course. This is the first in my updated suite of courses where I teach you everything you need to know to get started working with resin. In this course, we'll start out with the very basics, where I talk a little bit about resin and using it as an art medium. I'll go over some of my recommendations for brands of resin and types of resin to use based on the project that you're creating, and I'll help you pick a resin that's best suited for you. I'll be going over all the technical bits of correctly measuring out and mixing your resin, as well as some safety precautions you'll want to take while working. We'll go over all the materials you'll need to set up your workspace, and then I'll get into some more creative aspects of how to color your resin and different additives that you can add in to embellish your artwork. At the end of the course, we're going to apply everything that you've learned and create a smaller geode inspired resin piece together. You'll get to see my full process of how I typically go about creating resin work. You got to be quiet. I'm getting in the way of recording. You got to be quiet. My goal with this course is to help you become confident and excited to get working with resin and help eliminate a lot of the questions one often has when starting a new artistic medium. Alright, let's get started. 2. Using Resin: M So what is epoxy resin? Well, basically, it's a two part epoxy system. You have part A, which is the resin and part B, the hardener. When you mix them together in the right ratios, it results in a chemical reaction as it cures into a very hard plastic like material with high shine. When I started working with resin way back, there weren't many brands of resin, and you didn't really have a lot of options. But now resin has become so popular. And because of that, there are now tons of different companies making epoxy resins, giving you so many options. In this class, I'm going to focus more on the artist resin out there, but there are other resins made for thick castings, coating tabletops, and UV resins that you can use to make jewelry. Resins also come with different viscosities. Viscosity is important when you're trying to create a certain look. Maybe you're creating a geode resin piece of wall art and you want a thicker resin that areas can stay separated. Maybe you want a thin, more runny resin when creating coasters or casting because thinner resins tend to release bubbles a lot easier. Important to keep resin at a certain temperature and humidity level as it cures. And that's just basically whatever you comfortably keep your house at. You know, that kind of temperature range and humidity level is perfect for resin. One fun thing about resin is that it does not stick to plastic or silicone very well, which we use to our advantage. We can use silicone as a molding material for resin, and we can use silicone and plastic as mixing vessels that we can reuse over and over to cut down on the amount of waste. I love using, like, plastic, solo cups, paper Dixie cups, paint buckets from the hardware store or other measuring cups to measure and mix my resin. Once cured, you can easily peel the resin right out of these cups to reuse. I often have a stash of dirty cups that may have some cured resin in them, but I can still use them to mix new resin in. It's very important to recycle and reuse as much material as you can to cut down on the amount of waste you produce. This can be a very messy, wasteful medium if you're not careful. Keeping a tidy and organized workspace can really help with that. I find that removing the resin after about 12 hours is best because it's hardened to a point where it's not sticky anymore, but it's still very bendy and can come out of the plastic much easier than rock hard, fully cured resin will. Safety is really important when working with resin. You want to make sure you're working in a well ventilated area or an area that you have the ability to air out once you're finished working. You also need to make sure you have the proper PPE to protect yourself while you're working. Latex or nitrile gloves are a must to keep your hands resin free. If you do get resin on your skin, don't use water to try and rinse it off. It's kind of like oil in that respect. What you want to do is use, like, a baby wipe or just liquid soap lathered up and then wipe it with a dry paper towel to take off the resin. Repeat this as many times as you need to, and then you can rinse with water to get any soap residue. Other thing you may want to wear is, like, an apron or designated clothes that you wear only when you work with resin. Like I said before, resin is very messy, and if it gets in your clothes, it's not coming out. Lastly, and most importantly, you will need a respirator. Don't be fooled by resin brands claiming that you don't need one because their resin doesn't produce any VOCs. Reason they can claim this is that their resin is very stable in its separate parts and also when mixed together. But as soon as you introduce other materials to the resin like pigments, some inks or acrylic paint, it changes the chemical makeup essentially and becomes unpredictable with the amount of VOCs that get emitted. Also, when you create resin art, a heat tool is necessary to pop air bubbles in your piece. Whether that's a heat gun or a butane torch, adding heat to your resin will release VOCs into the air. Wearing a respirator with filters rated for fume protection is recommended for this stage of your resin making. Will often mix my resin and separate it into cups before I put my mask on and then mask up towards the end, once I go over everything with my heat source and further working with the piece. The respirator I prefer is a full face mask because your eyes are just as susceptible to soaking up VOCs as your lungs are at inhaling them. The last thing I want to talk about in regards to safety is exothermic reactions with resin. Resin cures, it heats up. It's part of its chemical reaction that it needs to cure and harden. But if left to cure in a cup or a mixing pot, it can generate enough heat to actually melt plastic or burn your skin or possibly ignite surrounding combustible materials, which sounds scary, but it can easily be avoided by not mixing more resin than you can handle at once. The resin needs the ability to spread out to release gases and cure. That's why if you have too much in a small vessel, an exothermic reaction could happen. Is also why it's important not to add more than 6% to 10% of colorant to your resin because any colorants specifically like acrylic paint, they kind of mess with the chemical reactions that resin has, so it definitely will trigger an exothermic reaction if you're adding way too much paint into your mixture. So let's talk about mixing the resin. Mixing is pretty simple. There's two methods you can mix by volume or by weight. If you're mixing it by volume, it's pretty much mixing equal parts visually of part A and B. You want to measure equal parts in each cup, that will give you a one to one ratio. You have mixing cups that aren't see through or aren't clear so that you can see if you're mixing equal parts, say if you're mixing a smaller amount in these Dixie cups, for example, there's a method that I like to use with a popsicle stick, in which case, I pretty much use the popsicle stick as my demarcation line or measurement line for each amount of part A and part B. So I'll just grab a popsicle stick that is clean and dry and pop that into my mixture of resin and pull that out, and that gives me a clear line of where I need to measure out my P B. So this is pretty handy to do if you, like I said, have a smaller amount that you need to mix up or are using cups that you can't see through. So I'll just pop that into the second cup and then go ahead and pour in my Part B up to that line, and then I know that I have equal parts of both. And then I can just mix these up and combine them into one cup to mix together. So you just want to make sure that you are getting as much out of that other cup as you can. You want to scrape that cup and get as much of that resin out of it as possible, just to make sure that your measurements stay accurate. And then you can go ahead and mix this up and combine it fully. Another way to measure by volume is to use a mixing container that already has measurements printed out on it. I love these that you can get from the hardware store. So if I say wanted to mix up 16 ounces of resin, I would measure out 8 ounces of resin and then another 8 ounces of hardener to give me that 16 full ounces of combined epoxy resin. This is really handy if you've got a larger measurement or you can grab some cups that already have pre measurements printed on the sides. But what if you need a measurement that's not already printed out? Well, you can create your own. So you could measure out, say, 4.5 ounces of water and pour that into a cup and then mark that line off and then pour another 4.5 ounces of water in and mark that second line off. Now you have your equal parts that you'll need to measure out of A and B. So you want to make sure that you dump the water out and you completely dry that cup. You don't want any water droplets left over because resin and water, like I mentioned, don't mix, so you want to make sure that's completely dry before you start adding in your resin. And it's always a good practice to get in the habit of measuring out your resin first regardless of which method of measuring out your resin you're using. It's just a good habit to get into. So you're not confused or you can't remember. Did I start with a resin or did I start with a hardener? Because that has happened to me before. So just always get in the habit of measuring out your resin, part A first, and then your hardener. So you would just measure to equal parts, your demarcation lines that you placed on your cup, and you're good to go. You can just mix it up in this cup and get started on your project. The second method of measuring resin is by weight. To do this, you'll need a kitchen scale and just place your mixing container on it after you turn it on, and then you want to make sure that you tear the scale out to get it to read zero so you're not measuring the weight of your mixing container. I like to make sure mine is set 2 ounces, and then you can grab your resin part A and start pouring in whatever amount that you need for your project. Now, this method requires you to plug in some numbers into an equation, and all the resins that I've talked about pretty much have the same equation, and that is required to make sure that you have equal parts, since resin and hardener have different densities. To plug that into our equation, we have every 100 parts resin needs 84 parts of hardener. For our equation, we have 22.5 ounces of resin. 22.5 times 84/100 gives us 18.9 ounces of hardener that we need to measure. And that gives us the correct ratio. Then we can plug that into our scale, we just tear the scale out to get it back to zero. And then we can grab our Part B of hardener, which usually has a different colored cap to help differentiate that from your resin, and then just measure this in and get as close to that calculation amount as we can. Now, if you're measuring out a larger amount of resin like I am, little discrepancies and differences are okay. It's not going to affect the caring of your resin much. You'll notice that I actually measure out a little bit more than I needed, but that's okay. It will still cure the smaller amount of resin that you have, the more crucial it is to get close to that measurement as close as you can to that measurement. And that is basically how you measure it by weight. Pretty simple. Now that we have measured out our resin, we need to mix it up thoroughly. It's a good rule of thumb to stir your mixture for about 3 minutes. That's usually about as long as it takes to make sure everything gets fully mixed in. When you first start mixing, you'll notice there's a string almost like a spider web look to the resin, and that is the resin separated out. You want to make sure that you're mixing it until you no longer notice those stringy bits. You want to make sure that you're constantly scraping the sides and the bottom and switching directions just to make sure that you can fully incorporate that resin. And that includes periodically stopping to kind of scrape off your stirring stick and just reincorporate that resin as well, just to make sure that it's mixed completely together. And once it is mixed, it'll be clear. You probably have a lot of bubbles, but it'll be completely clear and look like it's a homogeneous mixture. So keep mixing for about 3 minutes, and that should do the trick. So resins have a pretty thick viscosity like the one that I'm using for this class, and if I'm mixing up a large amount, sometimes it can be a little tricky to mix it well without incorporating a lot of air bubbles into it. Sometimes I like to thin out the resin a little by giving it a warm water soak. I'll just pop these into my sink and add some warm water and let these just sit in the warm water for a couple of minutes and that really helps to thin the resin out a little bit, and it makes mixing it so much easier. So I want to show you an easy way to figure out how much resin that you'll need for your project. I'm just over here on Mas epoxies website, and if you scroll over to this learn area and down to resin calculator, they have this really handy tool to help you determine how much resin you'll need. So if we just scroll down a little bit, we can enter in the dimensions of your project. So if you have a square, for instance, 12 " by 12 " or a rectangle, whatever the dimensions are that you're going to be working on, you can input those here. And then in the last box, we input the thickness. So the resins that I've talked about and the Art Pro need to level out to about an eighth of an inch. So here we're just going to enter that amount, so 0.125 and then if we scroll down here, we can select the specific resin that we're going to be using, which would be Art Pro in this case. It's pretty handy. It will tell you exactly how much you need for Part A and Part B if you're mixing by volume or by weight. This is really handy, especially for your final flood coat, which doesn't have to be anything more than exactly what your project needs. You won't have any wasted resin using this calculator. But if you are creating your design in your first stages, I always recommend to mix up a little bit more than this calculator would tell you to do, maybe a couple ounces depending on the size of your piece, just to give yourself a little bit of a buffer to create your design and have a little bit of extra to put where you think you need it. Mixing up your colors can sometimes be a little bit of a guessing game to see how much of one color you might need. So if you have a little bit of extra resin, it's easier to, like I said, have that buffer so you're not scrambling and, um, needing more resin than you've mixed. And if you scroll down a little bit more on this page, you'll see there's also a spot to input if you have a circle piece. So I'm going to be using a circle for this class, and it's really easy to determine the resin for that as well. You would just input the diameter of your circle and then also the thickness, which would be 0.125, and then it'll tell you the resin that you need for the circle as well. So really handy calculator to use if you are brand new to resin and you don't know how to estimate what you're going to need. This calculator will give you a good starting point for knowing how much resin to mix up. 3. Materials: Okay, so let's go over all the materials you're gonna need to create this geode piece at the end of the course. So everything on this table is pretty much all the things that you'll need to gather up and make sure you have before you get started. So let's go over it. First, you're going to need some sort of mixing container. This size is probably good enough for what we're going to do for our smaller piece together. I like these. I get these from the hardware store. I like them because they have the measurements printed on the side, so it's easy to measure by volume. There are two ways to measure out your resin, either by volume or by weight. If you want to do it by weight, then you will need a kitchen scale. Um, these are really handy to just keep in your workspace for measuring resin alone and not kind of swap it out for your kitchen stuff and your resin stuff. If you want to kind of designate that for your resin stuff if you choose to use the scale to measure your resin. You're also going to want some different sized cups for mixing your pigments of resin. I like these clear solo cups because it's easy to see the resin colors that you're mixing and if the opacity is right or if you've mixed it enough. You could also use different sized Dixie cups just depending on how much resin you need to mix up in that color. And then you're also going to want these stirring sticks. So I have different sizes of these. I just prefer to use these wood stirr sticks because they're pretty easy to find and they're reusable. So as soon as you're done working with it, just wipe it off and let that resin cure on the stick, and then it's good to go and you can keep reusing these. You're also going to want some PP E gear just to protect yourself from any resin. So you're going to want to grab some nitro gloves to make sure that you don't get resin on your hands. You're also going to want to use a respirator that is rated for VOC fumes. And also, you might want to grab an apron or something, some designated resin clothes. Just in case you get any on your clothes, it's not going to come out, so don't wear your favorite outfit. You'll also want some plastic just to protect your workspace, and resin doesn't stick to plastic very well, so you can easily peel a resin off when you're done and reuse this plastic over and over. You'll also want some sort of heat element to pop the bubbles in your resin. I prefer butane torch. It's refillable, and I just think it's a little bit more effective than a heat gun. But if an open flame kind of intimidates you, you could always opt for a heat gun instead to pop those air bubbles. You'll also want a leveler to make sure that your piece is nice and level because resin is a self leveling material. It's going to want to level itself out. And if your piece isn't level to start with, then the resins is going to kind of slide off the edge and ruin your design. You're also going to want paper towels around just to make sure that you can kind of clean up as you go so you're not making a huge mess. And then any sort of colorint that you choose to use to create your piece, and I will go over kind of all of your options in a little bit. And then, of course, any other embellishments that you'll want to include any sort of glass chips or quartz points or glitters, anything else that you may want to include to kind of embellish your work, that also includes paint markers, which I'll also go over my favorites and other ways to kind of embellish your work at the very end. And then, lastly, the resin of your choice. So let's talk a little bit more about different resins and what I can recommend to you. Alright, guys, let's talk about resin and what I can recommend to you. So I'm going to go over, I guess, four of my favorite resins that I use and have used in the past, and I'm going to go over kind of why I recommend them for you to try out and what I like about them. So first, I guess let's start out with these two. I don't use these as much anymore, but I definitely have used them in the past and really enjoyed working with them. The first one is stone coat countertops, art Cat and then Colorberrs geode resin. So these are great resins to use. They're both thicker resins. The viscosity on those is pretty high. They're very thick resins to use. Viscosity is just something that you're going to have to kind of test out for yourself and see what you prefer as an artist to see what you like working with because resins come in all different viscosities. Generally, I would say that the thicker viscosity resins work better for geode art and kind of art with resin in general, just because it helps to keep things sort of less flowy and more, like, separated as far as, like, colors and banding. And when you're creating your geode pieces, you want that kind of separation. So thicker resins are really good for that. Next up is probably I think my very first used resin, I started using this way back when, when I first started working with resin. It is a very good brand. This is called art resin. And yeah, the viscosity of this resin is probably the thinnest out of all of these that I'm going to talk about. It's still thick, but it's just a little bit more runny. And I do actually prefer that. I like this resins viscosity the most. But yeah, nothing more to say about this. They have a really great website with tons of information. Any question you could ever have is answered on that website. I guarantee it. Okay. And then finally, this is, I guess, the resin that I've been gravitating more towards lately. That is Mas Epoxys Art Pro. This resin is amazing. They have sales and giveaways on their website all the time. They also have an extensive amount of information on their website about their products. So if you have questions at all, check out their website. But yeah, the Art Pro is definitely one of my favorites. So why do I recommend these resins? So for starters, they are all very non toxic to use. They are VOC free, BPA free, very non toxic to use when they're in their separate states and while mixing together. Art resin boasts that you don't even need a respirator while working with their resin. However, I don't condone that message entirely. I think that these resins are very safe to use separate and when you mix them together, but as soon as you add colorants and other additives and especially heat, that's when you want to make sure that you're using a respirator because that will end up releasing some VOCs into your environment. So but for the most part, on their own, these resins are very non toxic, and that's something that's very important to me. And also, I guess, most importantly, these resins are very non yellowing. They have excellent UV inhibitors in them, which just means that it's going to take a lot longer for them to start ambering or yellowing over time. I kept in the proper conditions, you don't ever want to keep your art pieces in direct sunlight, and you definitely don't want to keep them anywhere where they're getting exposed to UV rays. In artificial lights as well, a lot of people don't realize that some artificial lighting also has UV rays in it, that can yellow resin, if it's, like, a spotlight on the piece. So as long as you're keeping it away from a window, and you should be great, you should be fine with non yellowing. Okay, so those are my recommendations for resin. Feel free to go ahead and try whichever one speaks to you. Alright, so let's go over all the different things that you can use to color your resin. I have a ton of options here that I want to kind of go over what I can recommend the most and what I might stay away from. So first, we have probably the most easily accessible, and that is acrylic paint. You could use, like, a craft kind of acrylic paint, or you could use more of an artist brand. They have different thicknesses of acrylic paint. So this is a fluid and what's this called? High flow and a fluid acrylic. These just mix really easily in the resin. Pretty thin viscosities. So those mix well with resin. Or you could use an acrylic ink. The thing with acrylics is that they have water in their binders, so water and resin do not mix very well at all, actually. So when using acrylics, you need to be careful. To only use no more than about 6%. And that, you know, is going to come with experience on how much 6% is in your resin. You really don't need a whole lot of colorant to tint your resin appropriately, and you really don't want to use too much because if you use too much, then you run the risk of um, an exothermic reaction happening with your resin, which is essentially just the curing process gets sped way up and it could become warm to the touch, like, really warm. Could start curing way faster than it needs to, and could result in, like, clumpiness happening and, um, Actually, it could get so hot as to melt plastic and combust materials around it, which sounds a little intense. I've never had that happen, but I have had exothermic reactions happen because of mixing too much pigment in the resin. So you want to make sure you especially if you're using any sort of acrylic paint, that you don't mix too much in the resin, about no more than 6%. Other option would be to use alcohol inks. Plenty of people use alcohol ink in their resin work. Nothing wrong with it. The alcohol tends to evaporate out, leaving just the pigment. So that's nice. You're not going to have much of an exothermic reaction risk with this. But alcohol is flammable. And if you're not letting that evaporate out quick enough or you're adding your heat heat torch too soon to it, um, you could run the risk of creating a flame. So alcohol really needs to be handled with care because it is flammable. Now, I don't recommend alcohol ink just because I've had some mixed reaction with it. Some brands and some pigments tend to color shift when you put them in resin. I don't know why, but it's kind of weird, like a brown will turn blue. And also alcohol ink isn't the most reliable in terms of fading. The colors tend to fade pretty quickly, especially when exposed to light. So I just tend to stay away from alcohol ink. It just isn't very archival, in my opinion. But I do like to use metallic alcohol ink. To kind of create finishes on my pieces, like a gold accent line or something, I will use like a metallic alcohol ink mixed with some type of metallic powder to create kind of a paste to then paint on my work. So I do like to use that. I'll use either alcohol ink or sometimes I like to use this, which is a spray paint, actually. It's like a spray paint base, so it's got, like, a solvent in there that I like to mix sometimes with the powder as well to create that kind of paste to paint on my resin piece and then outside of those are the more traditional, I guess, methods to color your resin. These methods are formulated specifically for resin in most cases. So you have your dry pigment powders, and these come in many different brands. A lot of artists have their own brand line of pigment powders. These are great because a little goes a long way with all of this, but these, especially just you can't add too much, honestly. It doesn't really affect the curing process of resin, but you don't really need to add too much. I mean, you'll kind of understand the more you work with resin, how much pigment you need to add. But these are great because they just come in so many different colors. Usually, pigment powders have mica sheen to them. They have this sort of glittery almost like sheen to them, and they're not really a flat color. So if you're looking for a flat color, I do have to recommend that you try out pigment paste. This is my favorite brand of pigment paste. I haven't really found any other brands of the paste out there, but I haven't looked very far because this brand is just amazing. I think this is an Australian brand, if I'm not mistaken. So it's a little harder to come by if you're not from Australia, but it is worth it. They have an extensive line of colors. Anything you can imagine, they have it. They also have Mica Shimmer pigments. So if that's what you're looking for, you could also find that. But these are just some really good flat colors that are super pigmented. So a little bit goes a long way. These pastes are created with resin as the base, as the binder of the pigment. So that's really pretty perfect for working with resin. So you won't have the actual hardener in here, so it's not going to harden. It's just the resin part of it. So it just works seamlessly with your resin creations. So, yeah, I would definitely recommend giving these a try if you're looking for a nice flat pigment that's not going to interfere at all with your resin curing process. Alright, let's talk about the fun part of accenting your artwork with different things. So first, we have glitters. Glitters come in a lot of different sizes. You could get extra fine or, like, a chunky glitter. I really like this brand. Glitter babes, they have a lot of great glitters to choose from. And this just adds a little bit of shine and a little pop of something extra in your piece. And markers are also a great way to add little accents to your work. At the end. My favorite to use are these pasta paint pens. These are an acrylic water based marker. So the cleanup is really easy. If you make a line that you don't like, you can easily remove it from your piece. And these come in so many different colors and tip thicknesses, you can really accent your piece however you want to with thicker thin lines. These are really great. Metallic markers are also a great option to add a little shine to your artwork. These are really handy in the marker format, but the older the marker gets, the more crusty they get. Brand new markers are best, but the older they get, the more unreliable that line is. You also might want to use real semi precious stones to accent your artwork. You could use quartz crystal points or smoky quartz points or any sort of gemstone you can think of. You can even get them in crushed up chip format. So these can be really interesting to add an extra element of interest to your work. You can get all different kinds of semi precious stones to really accent the colors that you're working with or maybe if you're into the healing properties of crystals, you could incorporate that as well. I get most of my semi precious stones from various sellers on EtS. I use glass chips for the bulk of my resin work because they're inexpensive and they still give the look of kind of a real kind of quartz. I like to use various different sizes of crush glass, and I prefer crush glass over fireglass because it looks a little bit more organic. And I love to use various different sizes. I think that gives it an interesting organic look as well. If you have some bigger chips and then some really fine smaller chips, I like to use, you know, different sizes. So I get most of my crush glass from either Amazon or Etsy as well. A lot of artists like to use fireglass for their work. This is created by basically crushing a plate of glass, you're going to have two smooth sides to this glass. Freglass also comes in a lot of different sizes. I used to use this champagne colored fireglass a lot and I found this one at Michael's. I also found these black ones at Michael's as well. I wanted to go over what I recommend to use as a substrate for your artwork. The only thing I really don't recommend is to use canvas. Canvases aren't that rigid, especially with the larger you go, the more flexibility that canvas is going to have and your resin could want to pull up in the middle. So for that reason, I just don't recommend using canvas. Wood is a much better option, in my opinion, just because of its strength and versatility, you could go to the hardware store and pick out a thicker piece of plywood and cut that to whatever shape or size you wanted, or you could go online and order premade cradled wood panels that have a really nice cradled edge to them and look really professional and they're well made. You could also get these cradled panels at any of art store. Blick art materials, I know sells these cradled panels and so does Michael's and Hobby Lobby. Your options are pretty endless with where you can source these wood materials. But like I said, wood is definitely my favorite go to form resin substrates. Are a couple things that I like to do to prepare my wood substrate before I get started working with resin. The first thing would be to seal the wood. To do this, I give it a couple coats of just a white gesso. You could use house paint or acrylic paint if you wanted to. You could also tint this paint to any color that suits your project needs. But sealing the wood is important, in my opinion, prevents any air bubbles releasing depending on the wood that you chose. It gives your artwork a really flat base, none of those wood tones. Going to show through. Then after I seal the wood with the gesso or paint, I like to tape the backside just with blue painter's tape, and this is to help me remove the drips that accumulate on the back of the piece after we're done pouring the resin. It just helps to remove those drips really easily, and then we use the heat gun to make those resin drips a little softer and they peel right off. But if you're not going to use a heat gun, then you don't need to tape the back at all. You could just sand these drips off with a power sander. 4. Getting Started: Getting started. So the first thing we're going to do to get started on our piece is to get some inspiration. And I love to turn to Pinterest for this. There are so many images on Pinterest to inspire you. I have this AI board that I've created and where I made a bunch of AI images to give me some inspiration for geode pieces to make these AI images, I used a program called Firefly. That's an Adobe program. I think you might actually need to pay for Adobe to be able to use this program, but it is pretty great for creating AI images, it's pretty simple to use. All you have to do is pretty much type in all your keywords into the prompt box. You know, keywords like colors and the shape of the geode, keywords like God slice, agate slice, any sort of colors you wanted to include. You can even input images of actual slices of Geodes to help the AI kind of generate its own images. And then when you generate the images, AI just goes to town and creates these amazing AI images. They're so cool. But so this is a great way to get inspired. For your piece, just with colors and shapes and just seeing what AI can do. But if you don't have this program or if you don't want to use AI, you can use Pintrst to find inspiration in other ways. So I love to look up just different color palettes that are on Pinterest, and I just pin my favorite ones that kind of inspire me or remind me of a certain room in my house or give me an idea for a new piece with different colors that I've never used before. So color theory is something that if you're struggling with looking at Pinterest can probably help you out with that. Looking at actual agate and God slices is another great way to get inspired, seeing how this natural stone looks when it's cut into and how the different striations and banding happen and how the colors radiate out from this central crystallized form. Really gives you a good idea of how geodes actually look and can help you with just the layout of your piece and different ways to create a piece of your own based on actual stones. Those are just a few ways to get inspired. I really do recommend going out on Pinterest and just looking at different images. If you do find another artist's work that you would like to emulate, I do strongly recommend that you don't copy it directly. You can take inspiration from other artists work, but it's really important that you add your own creative spin to it and really make it your own creative piece. Next, we need to decide what shape and what size you want your piece to be. I'm going with this 19.5 inch circle. I just got this from, I think Hobby Lobby, and I'm going to go ahead and prep this with just on the front and then I'm going to turn it around and tape off the back just so that the drips are easily removed with my heat gun method. After I tape the edges, I can go around and remove the excess tape with a exacto knife to really get that tape flush to the edge. These are the colors that I'm going to use in my piece and you can follow along and try to create the same piece that I'm making, or I strongly encourage you actually to use your own imagination and your own inspiration and make a piece with colors that speak to you, not necessarily the same ones that I'm using, but just in case you're curious, I'm going to go over exactly what I'm going to use. So first, I have a custom color that I mixed up with my pigment paste. This is like a charcoly greenish gray that looks pretty similar to the paint I have in the room that I'm going to hang this piece in. I have this created using a mixture of these. We have black, sage and a little bit of yellow to create this color. I might do a couple of variations of this just to give it more dimension. I'll create a mixture that has a little bit more black in it just to give it that extra pop. And then I'll be using white. We have here colorbrris karat shimmer. I love this pigment. It is so shimmery. It's so nice. Then I'll be adding a little bit of white to it to give it a more pearly look to it so it's not transparent. Then I'll probably also use the white on its own. Then over here we have two different browns. We have a chestnut and almond shade just for the variation. I think this brown goes really nice with this green color and I have a lot of wood colors in that room as well, so that'll look nice. Then for the gold, I chose this AicGld by JCK Designs and this is just a really beautiful antiqued gold. If you wanted a true yellow gold, Colorbry has a great gold for that and that's in the pigment powder, obviously. Then for my detailed work at the very end, probably going to use either one or both of these to draw in some gold detail lines. This is the gold spray paint in a can really beautiful, and then this is the alcohol ink in the color brass and these two look really good together. You could just use a gold marker if that's easier for you. When you get the new markers, they tend to work better. This one's pretty old and dried up and rusty. I'll use it for adding some shimmering details on my glass chips at the very end. Then I've also got some white markers. I just have a couple of different sizes of the pasca paint pens and these are great because they're not permanent, they're acrylic based, so you can wipe them off if you decide you don't like the lines that you've created. I like that. They're not quite so permanent until you add the resin over the top. And then lastly, instead of glitter, I'm going to be using these sheets of gold leaf, which are super delicate. I get these on Amazon and I just like the look of this. It looks like glitter, but it's just got this really beautiful shimmer and there's different sizes in the pieces once you mix it up, Um, I just love the look of this compared to glitter. But if you wanted to use Glitter for accent lines, that's completely up to you and there's tons of options for that. This is, I think, what I'm going to be using for my piece. If I added anything else, um, I'll be sure to let you know, but I'm pretty sure this is what I'm going to stick with. Now that we have gathered all our inspiration, we've picked colors and the size and shape of our substrate. We're ready to get started creating some designs and concepts for the look of our piece to give us a blueprint to move forward. We're just going to be using regular old paper and pencil or paper and pen to sketch these out. If you want to use colored pencil and get a little fancy with it, you're more than welcome to do that. If you want to get even more fancy, I do have another mini course about how I use the app Procreate with my iPad and Apple Pencil to give full detail color renderings of pieces and concept sketches of pieces that I do. I use this a lot for client work, just helps to give the client a really good idea of what they're paying for it also helps me to create multiple versions of something and make easy changes using the app Procreate. So if that's something you're into, you can check that out. But we are just going to be using paper and pen for this class, just to create some simple sketches and get our ideas out on paper. So since I know that my piece is going to be a circle, I'm just going to trace a couple of circles onto a paper to get started. I'm just using a coaster for a circle template here. It's just important to make sure that you have the correct proportions. If you're making a rectangle piece, make sure you have the same proportions for your sketch so it doesn't mess you up later. So we're going to start by sketching out a couple of different ideas until we find one that we like. I always like to start my sketches with kind of the crystal or glass chip formation first. In my opinion, it's kind of the anchor of the piece. It sort of holds everything together, and I like to base my designs off of this formation of glass chips and kind of have my design radiate out from it in sort of banded ways that kind of help resemble an actual slice of Dod or egot. It just looks more natural that way if I'm trying to emulate a natural stone. So we're just going to start by creating a shape for our glass chips, and then I like to just do some squiggles in the middle of it to kind of represent glass chips. And then from there, I just start kind of creating a design. So like I mentioned, I like to radiate out kind of around that glass chip formation. And if you'll notice, my formation of glass chips isn't super uniform or perfect. I really like these to be mismatched and not perfect because nothing in nature is perfect and I want this to look natural and organic. I like to make the shapes a little bit wonky, a little bit rough around the edges. And then I just create my banding around that and emulate those dips and curves as best I can. Then I try to keep in mind, based on the colors that I'm using want a good balance of dark areas and light areas to make it kind of balanced and not too heavy of darkness on one area. And I just want to make sure that I kind of have everything balanced out. I'm also keeping in mind, my color palette and where I think I might want to use certain colors. And I'm just doing simple light shading around areas that I think I might want to put the darker colors, and I'll just leave the areas white where I want the lighter colors to be. You can get really detailed with this. If you just feel more comfortable having color introduced, you could use colored pencils. But I'm so versed in this that I need a sketch to help my brain in the creative process. I'm just sketching things out. I don't need to get too detailed with this. I like to add my final detail work at the end and just see what the piece needs. I'm not getting too crazy with the details here. I just want to get the general shape and layout there, so I have a base to work from. Now I'm going to start with another design, one with a little bit of a different motif, a different flow to it. Again, I'm starting with the crystal and glass chip formation and getting that base in there of a starting point. Then I'm going to add my bands of colors to complement that area of crystal and glass chip stonework. Keeping in mind dark and light areas and really balancing those out. And just having fun with it and seeing if I like certain movements or certain patterns. And just have fun with it. Just get creative and draw up some sketches and go for the one that you like the most. All right. I did one more sketch, and I think this is the one that I'm going to go with, so I'm just going to fine tune it a little bit more. It's similar to that second one that I did, but a little bit different and I'm just really thinking intentionally about the colors that I've chosen and where I'm going to fit those. Yeah, I think this is going to give me a great starting point and I'm going to create my piece with this sketch in mind. All right, so we are ready to get started. Let's first begin by prepping our workspace. We're just going to lay out a sheet of plastic to really protect our table and make cleanup a lot easier. And then we'll set up our canvas, our wood panel and make sure that we get this as level as we can. I just have my wood panel propped up on a couple of Dixie cups, four Dixie cups, and then I've just used a couple shims to really get this piece as level as I can. You want to make sure that you're checking the level on a bunch of different angles. You don't just want one angle. You want all sides to be nice and level to get started. All right, we are ready to start pouring resin. 5. Final Project Part 1: In this first stage of the artwork, I'm only going to focus on kind of gluing my crystal glass pieces to my wood panel first, and I'm going to let that cure. And the reason I do this is because I want my design not to kind of flow underneath the stones in case I didn't get it completely level. Sometimes your resin design can kind of do things you don't want. So I want to make sure that these crystals have a nice clear base underneath them with no colored resin kind of tainting that space. First, I'm just going to mix up the amount of resin required to glue those crystal pieces down. I'm going to use the method with popsicle stick and measuring by volume that I went over earlier on in the class. And full disclosure, this was too much resin for what I needed it for. I probably only needed to mix half of this amount up, but I ended up using the excess to make a couple coasters, so no waste, but if you're trying to follow along and you have a similar sized piece, I'd probably only mix up half of this amount. But we're just mixing equal parts here, and then I'm going to combine this resin and get it fully mixed up by mixing for about 3 minutes and just to make sure that it gets fully incorporated. I'm going to tint this resin with the karat shimmer and a little bit of white so that it's not transparent. I want it to be a little bit opaque, like a pear leescent shimmery color. And this will just be visible underneath the crystals. If you wanted to do a dark base, that would look probably pretty cool depending on your um inspiration and what you're going for. But I want this to kind of be bright and shimmery underneath the crystals. So I'm just going to tint this resin with a little bit of that pigment powder and then add just the tiniest amount of white to give it a little bit of opaque color to it. All right. I've got my reference sketch here that I can look back to, and I'm just going to go ahead by pouring this area where my glass chips are going to go. You could sketch this out if you feel more comfortable doing that, but I'm just going to go in straightaway by pouring the resin right on where I best think that it's supposed to go based on my sketch. I'm going to choose my glass chips. I have two different sizes here. I've got a really chunky sized glass chip and then a smaller size because I want that dimension and differentiation of size. I just think it looks natural and organic. I'm going to use these two sizes and then just start by going in with my resin in that general area that my sketch shows. I'll kind of use a popsicle stick to kind of push that resin out and get it exactly where I want to make sure that my crystals all have enough resin underneath them to get cemented on for the next stage. All right. I like what this is looking like, so I'm ready to go in and add my glass chips now. I'm starting with a larger size, and I'm just randomly adding these in little clustered areas where I want some dimension to be. There's no rhyme or reason to this really, based on feel. I just do what I think would look good. Then once I've got all these bigger pieces on, I'm going to go and fill the gaps with my smaller glass chips and just really make sure that it's exactly how I want it. I can go and add a little bit more resin if I think I need a little bit. Um, of a different area or if I didn't add enough resin, I can always go in and add more and just fill the space with the remaining smaller glass chips. Okay, and I think that is looking good for our first layer. So I'm just going to go ahead and let this cure and come back to it the next day and start pouring the rest of the base layer. Now, if you didn't want to do this and you just want to go straight in and pour the rest of your design for this first layer, you can definitely do that. But I'm just showing you kind of my typical process. I like to get these crystal chips really cemented on there and leave no room for other colors of resin to sort of seep underneath. Okay, it is day two. I have come back the next day, and we are ready to get started pouring our base layer, our first kind of underpainting layer of our resin. So I'm going to mix up the bulk of the resin that I'm going to need to cover the entire piece, and I'm going to mix up about 19 ounces of resin. So using the weight method in my scale, I'm just going to measure out the part A and part B. Using the calculations that I went over and showed you earlier in the class on how to measure out with using this weight method. I'm just going to follow that and mix this up and get it ready to divide into my cups and add my color. Right, so I've gone ahead and laid out all my colors that I plan to use. I've got some cups and some mixing sticks all set out and ready to use. I'm just going to start dividing my resin out into these cups to add my color into it. So there really is no good method for the amount of resin I'm adding in. I'm just eyeballing it. The more you work with resin, the more you understand how much you're going to need of each color. But this is something that you're going to have to experiment with. I know exactly what colors I'm using. I know how to divide the resin up based on the amount that I think I'm going to use. I end up having a little bit extra that I'm not quite sure where it's going to go. So I just pour that into another cup and I'll decide where that needs to go. Towards the end. If I have maybe a blank area that needs more resin in a different color that maybe I ran out of, I can always mix up more with that little bit of extra resin. Don't forget to wipe off your sir stick and set your mixing container to the side so that you can easily peel that resin out and use those tools later. Okay. And now I'm going to start adding my colors into these cups and just keeping in mind that I'm trying not to add more than about six to 10% of these colorings, so you can kind of get an idea of how much color how much that looks like adding into cups of this size. You really don't need a ton to tint this resin accurately and opaquely enough. So I'm just going to go ahead and add in all my colors. I want to point out that I usually add more than you need for the gold pigment. I just like my gold to be super concentrated. And when we add heat to the resin, it really pops that gold and brings that gold metallic pigment to the surface. And this is definitely way more than 10%, but I find that with pigment powders, it doesn't really jeopardize the curing process of the resin. So for my metallic pigments, I usually go a little bit overboard and add a little bit more than is probably necessary, but I just want that gold to really pop in my piece. Okay, I am starting with laying down my shimmer pigment right up against this glass chip formation. So this is pretty much the same pigment that I used underneath the crystals. But I'm planning on adding white right next to this pigment, and I really like the subtle color shift that the white has when it's next to this pigment. I think it looks really pretty. Now I'm going in with a thin band of my gold. And if you can see, I'm just pinching that cup together to give me a little more control over the amount of resin that I'm pouring down. I love Dixie cups because they're malleable. They're the paper, you can really pinch them together and get a really detailed pour. I'm just adding my gold next to the white. And then I'll go in immediately with my butane torch and add some heat to that to really pop that gold to the surface. For some reason, that heat gun really works to bring that gold pigment to the surface of the resin, and it helps it kind of feather out a little bit and make it look really pretty. Now, I'm adding a little bit of that brown that I have mixed up. This is the chestnut brown color right next to the gold. I think that's going to be a nice complement to the gold, having that brown kind of right up next to it. I'm going to do a little bit of a thicker line than the gold was with this brown. I'm still, checking in with my concept sketch. And now I'll go over this with my heat gun. And if you notice I'm making quick passes with the heat torch. You really want to make sure that you're not concentrating that heat for too long on a concentrated area. You want to keep it moving and keep it pretty fast, kind of sweeping over the area as quickly as possible. Otherwise, you're going to run the risk of burning your resin and you really don't want that. Keep it fast and brief. You don't need to heat it for very long to pop those bubbles or to bring that gold to the surface. And now I'm going to go in with my lighter sage green, my deep charcoal green color that I've mixed up. And now right up against that, I'm going to be adding a little bit darker of that shade, just to give it a little bit more dimension. And you can use a popsicle stick to kind of push that around to get exactly the shape that you're looking for. I'm going to kind of sandwich that in with that lighter green color. Now, I'm taking my popsicle stick and I'm just dragging it lightly across the surface. I'm just trying to really slightly mix these colors along the border. I want to give it a little bit a different look than just a dark light green to dark green. I want it to blend a little bit and meld and give a little bit of a cooler transition. Going over once more with my heat gun to pop the bubbles as I go. It's important to touch the edges a little to break the surface tension to help that resin to flow over the edge. This just gives it a cascading effect of continuous design over the edge. Then I'll go over everything once more with my heat torch as I see more bubbles surface. Now I'm adding a little bit more of that shimmering pigment along the bottom here. I only have a little bit of resin left at this point, but I'm going to add the remainder of my brown pigment up here towards the top. My resin has been sitting probably for about 40 minutes at this point, so it's getting a little bit thicker. It's not as runny as it was when we started. I know that I'm nearing the end of my working time for this resin, so I've got to pick it up a little bit. Now I'm just doing a little bit of cleanup. I'm going to see if I have what kind of leftover resin that I have. I'm going to kind of wipe off my tools that I know I'm done working with to get them ready to cure and be reusable. And this cup had too much white in it, and I know I don't want to pour any more white on my piece, so I'm just going to pour that out on the table so that it has enough surface space to offload any gases, and it doesn't create that exothermic reaction because if you leave too much resin in these cups, it does kind of do that exothermic reaction that I mentioned before. You can kind of see here that this resin is starting to become kind of really sticky and, like, a thick molasses, and that's how you know the resin is nearing its end of its working time. So I'm just going to go in and add whatever leftover resin I have left and kind of trying to use up as much of it as I can and completely cover this piece to finish this first layer of resin. Okay, so I have used up all of my resin and we are finished with this first layer. I'm going to kind of monitor this and see if there are any more air bubbles I need to pop with my heat gun or heat torch. And I'll just let this do its thing and cure overnight and come back to it tomorrow. 6. Final Project Part 2: My second layer is all about the details. I'm not going to completely flood this with another coat of resin to completely cover the whole piece again. I'm just going to be selectively pouring certain areas of color and some glitter to kind of give it a little bit more dimension, like I mentioned before. I just have mixed up a little bit of a translucent white and then my second brown color, which is that almond. Then I just have a cup for my gold leaf that will act as my glitter in this piece. And I'm going to use about three sheets of this. And what I do is I just dip my stick in the resin to kind of give it a wetness so that it can grab onto the gold leaf, and then I'll just shove it in that cup and mix it up. So I'm just trying to make sure this gold leaf doesn't fly everywhere, but it's very delicate, so you got to be careful. We're just going to transfer all these colors into a baggie and then let this start to cure for about 45 minutes to an hour. By doing this, the resin is going to start curing and getting harder because it's hard, it's going to keep its shape a little bit better than cured or freshly mixed resin will. That just helps the design stay in place more. The longer you leave the resin and the more sticky and hard it gets, the less the resin is going to want to spread out. So for this first accent line of the translucent white, I'm starting to pour this when it's not super tacky. I mean, this resin has been sitting for, I would say 45 minutes, and I'm just going to add this to the piece. I know that it's going to be spreading out a little bit, and that's okay. That's what I want for this detail accent line. I'm just going to add this white to my piece and kind of finagle that until it looks how I want it to look. All right, so I'll lightly go over that with the heat gun or the torch just to pop those air bubbles, and then we can dive in with my gold foil accent. This is a little bit stiffer than the white one, but I don't need this to be a super thin line, so I'm okay with how cared that this is. I'm going to start applying this and see how that goes. I know that this is mixed into clear resin. After I add my flood coat, you're not going to notice the clear resin at all. You will just notice where the gold flakes are. So however dense you make this is going to give a different look. Because mine isn't super dense, it's going to look more like a flaky gold accent and less like an actual line of glitter. So if that's what you're aiming for, I would mix a ton more glitter or gold foil into this mixture so that it becomes super dense and looks like an actual line of glitter. But I want this to be more flaky, so I didn't mix as much gold foil into it. So I'm just going to go through and add some accents where I think this gold would look best. I'm going to put it in some of these brown areas and up against the other gold. I think it's going to look really pretty next to that. Okay. Now for the final part of this gold accent, I'm going to add it to the border of my glass chips. I just love how this looks, so I'm going to create this edge of gold glitter gold foil along my stones, and I'm just bring it up into the glass itself a little bit, just to feather it in a little bit. Then lastly, we have the brown pigment, which has been sitting for the longest. I think this has been about an hour now, so this is going to be probably the most structured line that I have. I'm just going to add this in where I think looks best. I'm going to trail it along the other brown pigment area. Then I'm going to also add it inside this other brown layer. I'm also going to come down here and follow this natural curve next to this gold. And then one more line detail in the middle of this green area. And I think that's going to do it for all these detail lines. And again, I'm just trying to follow the natural flow of the piece. I like to, you know, keep these a little bit structured in that they're not haphazardly placed. I like to kind of follow the structure and form that the piece is already showing. And then we will let this sit and cure overnight and come back to it tomorrow. And This is one of my favorite stages of the piece. We are adding the final detail accents. So I just have this drawing glove on my hand. It just helps to protect from getting any oil on the piece from my hand and it helps my hand glide over the piece really easily. So we're going to start by drawing in some white accent lines with my Posca paint marker. So I'm starting in with the thinner line. And I'm just going to add this to the white areas that I poured. Since the white was somewhat translucent, I think this opaque white marker is going to really pop over that white and give it a nice look. I'm just going to add some of these detail lines kind of trailing along the natural flow of what I already have laid down here, making sure that I continue the line over the edges. So this is an example of how you can remove a line that you don't like. So I put this line down and I decided, You know what? I want this line on the other side of the white. So I'm just taking a damp paper towel, and I am wiping this line right off. The great thing about those posca paint pens is that they are acrylic water based pens, so they are going to come off if you decide you don't want them. So I'm just wiping this white completely off, and I'm going to restart by drawing the line on the other side of that white. I'm just going to continue adding these details. It's just by feel. It's wherever you think they need to go. There's no right or wrong way to add details, and the fun part is you can add as much or as little as you want and make this as jam packed or as sparse as you want as well. So now I'm going to go in with a little bit of a thick white marker, and I just love adding dimension and differentiation by using different sized markers. I think it adds a lot to the piece for interest. And then, wouldn't you know, I decided to remove another one of those white lines. So I have removed one of the thinner lines and decided I wanted it to be a thicker line. So I took that off, and now I'm going over that same spot with that thicker white marker. Okay, so now after I've got all my marker lines down, I think that I want to go in and add some gold details. So I just have poured out some of this pinata alcohol ink and brass into a little cup, and I'm just going to use a paint brush to paint this around my glass formation in the middle. I don't want to completely cover up the gold foil flakes that I had laid down. I want this to kind of hug the crystals a little bit tighter, and I'm also going to bring it up into the crystals, just like I did with that gold foil flake. So I'm just going to follow along the entire border and kind of coat this all with this gold pigment. Now I'm taking that gold marker, and I'm just really lightly dusting it over a few of the high point tips of these glass chips. I just think that adds a really interesting element to it. And then I'll just continue adding a little bit more detail with my pinata alcohol ink and my paintbrush. And then I'm also going to add a couple more linework gold accent lines with that Montana liquid gold that spray paint in a can. And once I'm happy with these accents, I think this piece is going to be done. And now all I have to do is wait for these lines to fully dry, which for me, that's just going to be overnight, and then we can come back and add our clear final coat of resin to cement all of these details in place. Alright, it is the next day, and we are ready for our final flood coat. So once you're happy with your piece and you are ready to seal it up, we can go ahead and apply that last layer of resin. So I just have mixed up another 19 ounces of resin, and I'm just going to start layering this over the whole thing. And I'm just going to use my hands to kind of smoosh it all together and make sure I have every spot covered by resin. And again, I'll use my hands to run them along the edges just to make sure that the resin is flowing completely over the edges, as well. Then I'm also going to drizzle some resin on the crystal formations just to make sure that everything is cemented in place and I want to clear coat any gold details to make sure that those stay in place and just make sure that the piece is completely and 100% covered with resin. After I'm sure that it's covered, we can start going in and popping all the bubbles with our butane torch. And you want to make sure, again, that you're making quick passes with this torch. You don't want to concentrate it too long and you want to keep that torch moving and just so you're not burning the resin in any one spot. Keep that going and go over the entire thing once and then put that torch down because we don't want to overheat the resin. We're just going to make one pass to pop the bubbles and then we can get down at an angle and look against the glare to make sure that there's no more air bubbles and go over those spots that you might see some micro bubbles rising to the surface. Then I also like to grab a toothpick and just start to pick out any fluff or hair or dust that I might see in that coat of resin to really get that finish as nice as possible. Getting down at eye level and looking against the glare really helps you to notice any imperfections that might be lurking in the surface. Okay, so once we have completely eliminated the air bubbles, we don't see any dust or hairs, we can let this finally cure. I'm just going to close my workspace up. I have the vents closed, so there's going to be no circulating air and no chance for any hairs to kind of fall in the piece while it's caring. 7. Last Look Recap: Okay, guys, our flood coat has cured. It is looking beautiful. I hope yours looks amazing. But now it is time to get rid of these resin drips that have accumulated along the edges. So the tape is going to do most of the work for us. It is going to make these resin drips just peel right off. All we need to do is add a little bit of heat. I prefer to use a heat gun to help with this if you don't have one or don't want to use one. You can sand the edges as well or ascend the back as well, and these drips will just sand off. It takes a little time, it's a little tedious. That's why it's not my favorite method, but if you do want to sand them, you don't have to tape the back. You'll just leave it and then you'll sand the back. But we are using a heat gun to speed things up, so let's get started. So I have my piece sitting against my couch to protect the surface from any scratches or dents. Since this needs a full seven days to cure to its full hardness, it can be dented and scratched at this point. So we're going to use our heat gun to remove these drips as our final stage of this piece. So what I like to do is heat up an area about six to 10 " at a time. And that's just what I prefer to do. It gives me enough time to remove the drip before it cools off. So we're just going to go around and start heating this up in small increments and then ripping the tape away, and those drips just come right with it. So pretty satisfying. Let's get to it. All right. And that wraps that up. We have all the drips removed, and she is looking beautiful. Let's take a closer look at some of those details. All right. That wraps up our resin geode class. We have finished with our resin geo beauty. I hope yours looks great. I'm really happy with how this turned out. I hope that you had a lot of fun and learned a lot about resin along the way. And most importantly, I hope you gain the confidence to get started working with resin. All right, thanks for taking the class. Bye.