Using a Multiple Layer Resin Method to Create a Fish Pond and Upcycle a Table | Alison Camacho | Skillshare
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Using a Multiple Layer Resin Method to Create a Fish Pond and Upcycle a Table

teacher avatar Alison Camacho, Resin Artist and owner of fuzzycomma

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      1:17

    • 2.

      Designing Your Pond

      3:15

    • 3.

      Preparing Your Table

      5:48

    • 4.

      Making Model Fish

      11:33

    • 5.

      Making a Lily

      4:01

    • 6.

      Multiple Layer Pond

      22:08

    • 7.

      Painting the Legs

      10:11

    • 8.

      Finishing Your Table

      2:29

    • 9.

      Project

      2:22

    • 10.

      10Final

      1:43

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About This Class

This course teaches you how to use multiple layers of resin to build up a 3D artwork in a unique way - by creating a resin pond on a table top, upcycling the table in the process.

You will learn:

  • How to pour resin in layers, painting on each one to create 3 dimensional water weeds and floating fins for your goldfish
  • How to design your pond
  • How to prepare, sand and paint your table
  • How to make clay goldfish
  • How to use acrylic skins to make lily pads and flowers
  • How to paint the table legs with a goldfish design to complement the pond top
  • How to finish everything off beautifully

Details of all the different stages are shown with many speeded up sections so you can see the entire process without wasting any time. Hint and tips are given throughout.

This course is suitable for people wanting to try a creative upcycling project, or a little bit of modelling or having a go at the multiple-layer resin method for creating 3D art.

If you have never used resin before I recommend taking my "Wow-factor! Resin Coating an Artwork, for Beginners" course first, so you are confident mixing and pouring resin.

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Alison Camacho

Resin Artist and owner of fuzzycomma

Teacher

Hello, I'm Alison.

I'm a resin artist based in Bristol UK. I own the fuzzycomma art brand and fuzzycomma.com website. I specialise in geode and astronomy resin art although I am often tempted into creating art which attempts to help save the planet. I am passionate about preserving our world for future generations and so I like to reuse resources that would otherwise get thrown away, and I hate waste. In line with this philosophy, I also upcycle furniture - particularly small tables, often using a geode or astronomy theme (sometimes all at once) and, of course, resin! A defining feature of my art, and of my life, is my love of colour.

I am constantly refining my art and learning new techniques which I aim to pass onto my students. I have nearly 20 years experienc... See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Welcome to my video on how to upcycle a pond table. I go from this little wine table top to this table top, which is glorious. A pond. And from these table legs, to these ones covered with gold fish. I go through all the different aspects of pond design, including all the things that you might want to put in fish and lily pads, tadpoles, even a dragonfly. I showed you how to make clay fish if the right size and shape so that they fit in the pond designed and how to paint them. I show you how to use multiple layers of resin painting on each layer. as you go in order to create depth, to my water weeds, you end up with something that looks like this, a real pond. It looks like it's wet, it has depth. It's got fish and tadpoles, dragonflies, waterweeds, rushes. And interesting and semi-precious stones in it as well. So much glitter, it's a proper piece of art for you to put your coffee on. 2. Designing Your Pond: In this video, I go through all the different components that you might want to include in your pond. Resin is uniquely suited for making a pond as it's clear and can simulate water. Ideally, you would use a wide, shallow dish or something to put your pond in. And I consider a tabletop from a little wine table which has a lip Perfect. Lots of life needs to go into a pond, tadpoles or frogs bull rushes, duckweed, lily pads, fish, and all sorts of things like rocks and glitter to make things stand out. Here you can see me designing my pond, putting all the different elements in approximately the right places. You can see I've gone for fish and tadpoles, lily pads, different sorts of water weed. And I put them together to make a pleasing design. It needs to be balanced left to right, front to back. But I also need to include aspects of my pond which actually stick out of the water. And because this is going to be a table top, I want to make sure that the elements that are going to stick out are all on one side, or together at least. So that most of the tabletop is useful for putting things on. When designing something as complex as a pond. And I like to put my ideas down on paper. All of the different elements need to fit together. And we need to consider what sorts of things to include. Before you can set things in resin, you need to create them first so that you can incorporate them at the right point in the right place. Once it's set, you won't be able to move them. Here, you can see me making notes on the things that I'm going to include, tigers-eye chips and green aventurine chips, bringing out the golds and greens and browns that would find in a real pond. I add color to my design to enable me to see that the colors go together and that the design is coherent. You don't actually have to add color if you don't want to. It's a personal preference of mine. The background is actually really quite important. In a real pond, most of the animals that live in the pond will be camouflaged. They weren't stand out, but I actually want my fish and tadpoles and things to stand out so that you can see them in my design. Consequently, I've decided to go with a black, almost black, background, but with lots of glitter and sand things in order to make it stand out. But you can see me here adding the black to the background. And actually it makes a really lovely design. Real ponds are incredibly complex and diverse habitats. And I wanted my design to reflect that complexity. So you can see that I've got lots of 3. Preparing Your Table: Preparation. Its really important to prepare your surface so that it's ready for receiving paint, so it doesn't peel off. You can see that the wood on these table legs have probably been damaged by sunlight. Certainly it's faded. And the faux leather table top is starting to peel that the edges. I wanted to get back to a sound substrate. So I'm cutting away the peeled up parts of the faux leather, I decided not to remove all of it was it was really quite well stuck. And I quite like the fact that it gives me a little bit of texture at the bottom of my pond. Having cut away the peeling up parts. The next step is to sand. So i sand around the edges of the leather, but I also end up sanding all of the wood. This is really important. Sanding acts as a key so that any paint or other materials, that I stick to the surface, actually stick and they don't then peel away. This can be done by hand, of course, but I choose to use an electric sander. This one's quite nice with a triangular base to it. It allows you to get into all the little corners, especially important on a table top, this shape. You need to select the correct sand paper so that you have a smooth finish and you don't leave scratches behind, which will show when you paint it. I would recommend 800 grit. The higher the number, the smaller the grains and the smoother the sanding. Once sanded, it is really quite important to remove all of the sanding dust, either with a brush or a vacuum cleaner and wipe it all down with a damp cloth. The next step is painting. I painted this with a matt black spray paint and then a diluted acrylic paint mix. That I could pour onto the surface. As I explained before, in a previous video, my background, I want to be really dark. So I chose some black, some dark green, a tiny bit of blue, but ponds really aren't blue, to mix together in order to create this background. And it dried much, much darker. It's almost black when it's dried. I chose a matt spray paint, so that I would still have a bit of a key for my acrylic paint to stick to afterwards. And you can see that when I use a paintbrush, the acrylic paint does spread successfully over the surface. To give added interest and contrast. I wanted to use a silver spray paint dripped onto the wet surface of the acrylic paint. Spray paint is oil-based and will float on the water that the acrylic paint is diluted with. Use a light dusting of a spray lubricant, which is also oil-based to give interesting effects. And then I push the spray paint around using just a wire to drag it into what appear to be ripples. Use the fact that the acrylic paint underneath the spray paint is fluid to move it around and give interesting effects and manipulate it until I'm happy with the design and then leave it to dry. The next step is to sand the legs. We need to make sure that I sand them all over, on the upright as well. And use either the electric sander or on the upright where it's almost cylindrical, hand sanding to make sure that every surface is keyed so that it will accept paint. You can see that I'm using old clothes and I'm wearing a mask in order to do the sanding despite the fact that I'm doing it outside. This is because I'm sanding off old varnish and I really don't want to breathe that in. When sanding I take the table apart as much as possible so that all of the adjoining parts are also completely sanded, right into all the nooks and crannies. This is a tedious job. It's definitely my least favorite part of upcycling, but it's really important and the better you do this, the better the finish will be on your finished product. Once sanded, the next step is to paint the legs. I chose to go with black so that it would match with the black of the table top. And I'm choosing to use spray paint. When spray painting, do it outside so that you don't breathe in any of the fumes and use even smooth strokes, about 20 centimeters away from the thing that you're painting. And keep the can moving. Make sure you shake it a lot before you start. And once you finish, turn it upside down and press the button to allow the paint that's in the nozzle out so that you get a nice even spray the next time you use the can. Multiple light coatings or much better than one thick coating. Because the thick coating you might end up with runs. You can of course paint with a paintbrush, if you prefer, I like to use spray paint because it gives a nice even coating and it really gets into all the corners very, very easily. The other thing is it dries very quickly, Most spray paints are touch drive within about 20 minutes. 4. Making Model Fish: To make my goldfish, I chose to go with an air dried clay. You could choose to use a polymer clay like scopy or 500. But there would be an extra step of firing it to be like in the oven to harden it. If you'll add dried clay, gets too dry. You can always add a bit of water with a spray gun to make it damper and more flexible. Again, you can see I'm choosing to use gloves. This isn't to protect my hands, it so that I don't leave fingerprints on my model. I have a whole set blue plastic tools. In addition to these, I use a wire for small homes and craft knife. My fish are not going to be very big. I especially don't want them to be told so that they don't stick out too much from the top of my resin table top. So I select a small lump of clay, which I then need to make it flexible before I start modelling, I'm going to make two fish. I start with the first fish, the bigger one, making its body. This is a stream line shape. And once I form the shape and I'm happy with it, I give it a slight curve and then I squash it from the top so that it's not too tall. I want my fish to have prominent eyes. So I roll tiny little lumps of clay and stick them on in the appropriate place. I do two lumps for each eye, the first slightly larger than the second. I repeat this process so far to make a second smaller fish with the bend going the other way to give added interest. So the two fish are not too similar. I used a piece of electrical wire to poke a small hole in each eye to act as a pupil. And also to help the little balls that make up the eye to stick to the body of the fish. This is quite lee when making such small models, but it's worth persevering until you get the result that you want. The next step is to roll out some clay to make the thins. The fins need to be really wafer-thin. And I start by rolling it out on my mat. But I choose to then sandwiched between two layers of thin plastic. The plastic has been taken from the wrapping the accord birthday card came in. And I use this to help stop the Live from sticking to my surface or sticking to my rolling pin. If you use NOI Smith plasticky peels off quite successfully. And this method allows you to get wafer-thin things. You need plastic both above and below your layer of clay to stop it from sticking. You can see me struggling here where I'm going to use one layer of plastic beneath the clay. It sticks to my rolling pin. So we're not use a second layer of thin plastic above the client. I can roll it out really thin. Pm plastic off from one direction seem to be problematic. But when I pulled it off from the other direction, I have no problem putting surface with a gloved hand using the flat of a plastic tool and can make the surface completely smooth. I use a craft knife to cut out the shape of the tail fin. I use the knife to push away the unwanted area of clay and so that I get the tail fin separate from the rest of the role doubt clay. At this point it is still supported by the thin layer of plastic Antony, thin clay dries are really quite quickly. So I use the flexibility of the plastic to support the clay while it dries out a little bit and hold it in the correct shape. The table joins smoothly to the rest of the body. I use a similar technique for the fence on the dorsal side of the fish. You can see that the tail fan of my small fish is now sufficiently dry, but it won't stick successfully to the body of my small fish. So I choose to use a little bit of superglue in order to fix the template. Here, I'm using scissors to cut a fringe on the ends of the tail fins. I also do this on the side fins. I think next time I make a fish are going offer to do this because it didn't add much to the aesthetics when cutting out the fins, but chose to use scissors rather than the craft knife. Clay layer is so thin, I discovered it's easier to do this with these tiny fiddly things. The natural things in the same way. Tile. By the time I'm sticking the small things onto my small fish, everything's dried a little bit too much. So I roughen up the surface using point of my craft knife. And then using a paintbrush, I dab a bit of water both on the fins and onto the bottom of the fish so that the clay will stick successfully sue itself. You can see that the clay is quite rigid enough, even when it's certainly drawn to this extent, hold its shape. I repeat the roughening up and then dumping sequence in order to affix the dorsal fin to my small fish. The dorsal fins are deliberately fold it over slightly so that my fish don't stick up too far so that they won't stick out of the resin too much when I make my poem. Once you're happy with your design, you need to allow the fish to dry out such small models, the clay won't take very long to dry. I chose to spray paint my fish completely all over with gold spray paint off all that gold fish. So that this would show through as a, as a sheen or from underneath. And I'm painting acrylic paint on the top of that. Using a very fine brush, I'll start using black paint on the I is only the center circle of the two circles for each EIS is painted. And this takes quite long time, despite the fact that it's a very small area that you're covering because it's so delicate. I move on to paint the fence with a nice bright orange paint. Again, acrylic. I don't want to cover them completely and I don't use straight lines or use curved lines following the lines of the fins themselves. I also turn the fish over. Some of what I'm painting on the bottom won't be visible, but where the thins that cold, you might see some of the bottom. So it's worth painting those two. When you happy with the orange, I may want to wind. This gives a contrast and highlights and add more dimension and movement, especially if you make it swirl. The lines mustn't be straight. For the overbar. You've put the orange on all the things. I move back to orange with a very fine brush and proceed to draw scales on the sides of both fish. I also draw the semicircular gill cover just behind the eye. Above the lateral thin. More detail you put into your painting. The better the finish will be. The scales on the small fishes so small that you can just use dots to suggest scales. Keep turning your modulus you painted. I'm not doing that here because I want to make sure that they're visible to the camera. But it's much better if you can turn it so you can see all sides of your model as you're painting it. Having finished with the orange paint on waveform to blank. Again, this adds highlights and because it's also right next to the white, the contrast means that you get depth and more suggestion of movement. Again, don't paint in straight lines. Follow the lines of defense, the curves, the swells. Again, this movement, I use black paint to suggest a mouth. And gold fish males really very sort of down in the corners. Thank you. And I use it a tiny Dr. White on each eye to suggest that reflection. This keeps the fish character and makes them look healthy. And then forget to flip your fish over when using each color and make sure that the curves that will be visible all painted. When you're happy with your design, that the paint dry and ready to install on your palm table. 5. Making a Lily: Making a living. I chose to make my lily pads and my lily flower from acrylic skins. Acrylic skins are made when you pour acrylic paint, which has been mixed with a little bit of water and some PVA glue onto a plastic sheet and let it dry. You can peel it off once it's dry. And it forms a really quite a tough but thin layer of beautifully marbled colored acrylic skin. The texture is a bit like a vinyl plastic sticker, and it's quite durable and suitable for making into a model that I can then coat with resin. I chose a marbled blue and green acrylic skin to make my lily pads. And I simply cut them into the correct shape using a pair of scissors. The lily flower is much more difficult. And I chose to use a cutting stamper in the shape of a flower. I wanted it more complex than just this one shape though. So I cut out several flowers, which I then joined using cotton, spread the different flower shapes together and use a contrasting color. You can see I've got quite a dark serifs, pink for the thread so that I can use those as the statements for the Lilly. And they show once the flower has been put together, the acrylic skin is quite resilient and it needs to be folded really quite hard in order to stay folded. In fact, I use a little bit of white modelling CLI between the petals in order to get them to stay in shape. You can see that the needle goes through a single layer of acrylic skin quite easily. But when I try to punch through the five or six layers that I've got here. I end up using my desk to push the needle as I don't have a thimble, I recommend getting a thimble. I place the lily pads on the first layer of resin. Now I've poured once it's nearly dry and use a bit of ordinary paper glue like a Pritt Stick to hold the lily pads in place. In fact, I place three lily pads in my design. The first two, I allowed to have slightly cold edges and I covered those with subsequent layers of resin. The last lily pad leaf I put on the last, but one layer of resin. I cut it so that it's got a couple of holes in it. So it's not quite perfect and it looks more realistic. But I don't allow the edges to curl up so they stick above the layer of resin. The lily flower, I also place on top of the first layer of resin. This means that the lily flower is slightly submerged. But in fact, real lily flowers do end up like this. And being slightly submerged hot makes them really hold its shape better. 6. Multiple Layer Pond: Putting the pond together. This is where you learn the multiple layer technique for creating depth in your artworks. I will be showing you each of the layers in turn. The first layer is placing the rocks, the sound, the glitter. This is the hard landscaping, if you like, of your pond. I've selected four different rocks, all of them about the same size. And these rocks are going to end up proud of the table top surface at the end, the ropes, I've chosen a crocodile Jasper, a desert Jasper, and an orange silkscreen, and quartz colorless crystal. All of these blocks of rough and you can see that the colors are very shiny. It, when you pull resin over them though, they, the dichotomous will come out because they're going to end up proud of the surface. I've put the rocks all in the same place on the table. I want to preserve as much of the flat area of the table for putting things on as I can, because this is a table. I add sand, this is builders sand. It's quite a dark beige color. And I'm mixing with the sand. All different colors of glitter. Glitter I'm using is from advanced metallics. And it's actually made from real metal in lots of different shades. And the advantage of using real metal glitter is 30, It's quite heavy. And when I pulled the first layer of resin over the top of this, it is a glitter. Glitter won't move. I use a small spoon to allow me to put my sound, my glitter approximately the right places. And I push it about either with this burden on my finger or a brush. So the TI end up with the sand and glitter in the places that I want. I want enough of the pond base to be covered so that I've got some contrasts between the Sunday glittery areas and the almost black areas. More texture is added by the now dried silver ripples you can see in the background. I keep adding more sand and more glitter and rearranging it until I'm happy with the design. While I'm doing this, I'm considering where the other elements of my pointer going to go. I use at least four or five different types of glitter in copper colors, gold colors, even silver colors, and different sizes of flakes to all of this adds extra texture and gives interest to the finished piece. The next stage is to place my now fully dried and painted fish. I need to consider carefully where these Fisher going to go. Because I am where that despite on me trying very hard not to have the fish protrude too far up. Some parts of the fins are going to end up above the top layer of resin. I want to protect those bits of fin that are sticking up as much as possible because otherwise they might get damaged by people putting things on the table. So those tallest parts of the fish I've put close to the rocks which are also going to be stuck up above the top layer of resin in order to protect them. The next step is adding abalone shell. I've chosen abalone shell because it's iridescent, reflective, multiple colors adds contrast to the background. It's a sort of pinkish color too. And then once I've placed my abalone shell, I also go ahead and put down chips of fluorite and also tigers i and green are venturing chips. I've chosen these colors because the gold and browns of the tigers, either green of the adventuring and they almost colorless, slightly pinkish shades in the fluoride chips. All of them complement the colors that upon this meant to be. I push around my chips and my abalone shells until I'm happy with the design. I follow the design that I created on paper, making sure that I also balance left to right front, back, makes sure that there is interest in every part of the pond. You can see that I'm using a small spoon to move my chips into the right places. And you can use tweezers, but these little chips or polished already and they're very sleepy. So Tweets us don't work well. Fingers and even a brush to push the chips into the right places is the white guy. In this next sequence, I show you how to glue in the acrylic skin rushes. The acrylic skin that I'm using is exactly the same one as I used for the lily pads. And I've just cut rush shapes using scissors. I glue the rushes in place using a hot glue gun. And I cover up the basis of all of the little leaves using some of the chips and rocks that I had to hand. I also choose to put a few rushes on the outside of the lip of the table and make sure that the rushes protrude. Below the bottom edge of the lip. And after the blue has dried, I cut them off, flush. The rushes are going to stick out of the water. The top layer of the resin all around the edges. And they can be quite spiky. So I have not added too many. And I want to make sure that the design is balanced left to right so the rushes or evenly distributed around the pond. I've been careful not to make it too symmetrical because palms are never really symmetrical. But I want to add that little flash of green on both sides, front and back to make a nice balanced design. Having put all of the components that I want to include in this first layer in place. I then pour my first layer of resin. I need to mix enough resin that I get a reasonable thickness of resin over the base. And that will depend on the area that you want to cover and how thick you want your first-level of resin to be. Included in the resources attached to this course. A calculator for calculating how much racing you need for each of the steps here. When you pull your resin, especially on this first layer where all of the different components are not fixed in place, you need to be careful that you don't move things about too much so that things get displaced from where you've carefully placed them in your design. So poor from quite close in and pour onto inanimate parts. Possibly can. Once you've pulled your resin, go over it with a heat gun in order to get rid of any bubbles. Having said that, this is a poem and if you get a few bubbles, it might add to the aesthetic. Once you've pulled your first layer of resin, this is where you start to use painting on each layer to build up a more and more complex design. In my design, I've chosen to include tadpoles. I actually want tadpoles or more than one layer of resin so that my tadpoles can be swimming over and under each other. Tadpoles are easy. They have mostly black heads and slightly S3 grayish tails. So I emphasize the tails with a bit of white. I also make sure that I can see my tuples are 0s. In real life, you can't really see tadpoles eyes. But I want to include this because I want to add interest to my pond and make it possible for people to actually see these objects. Although in real life type poles that quite well camouflaged. I paint using and diluted acrylic paint neat from the tube and a very small brush to get the design the type want. Tadpoles like to collect together on the rocks and close to the edges of poems. So that's where I've placed most of my time. Polls. I put one or two in the middle. Underneath or nearly underneath the lily pads. You can see here that I've placed the lily pads on top of this first layer of resin, and I've allowed the edges of the leaves to curl up a little bit in order to make my fish look like they are actually occupying the water. And to make the ends of the fins even more, It's really thin. Then the very thin clay that I've used to create the models, I'm extending the ends of the thins using paint onto this first layer of resin. It happens to be about the right height for the fins of the fish. I also choose to add some little whiskers to my goldfish. Not all goldfish have these, but I wanted to have my little whiskers floating in mid air and water really. And so adding them to this first layer of rising is the perfect time to do this. You can see in the background my allele, which has been placed on this first layer of resin. Depending on how thick you make the acrylic paint, it can be almost see-through. Again to give this idea that light is coming through the fins, how thin they are. Obviously you need to make your extension steel fins swirl in exactly the same way as you did when painting the fins on the fish when you made them anti-free stage, you need to consider your design. And hey, you can see me considering how I'm going to place my little dragonfly that I haven't shown you how to make. And I want to protect the very, very thin wings of my dragonfly. So I place a couple of extra rocks, agree, no pull and orange are gait. In order to protect the wings of my dragonfly and I consider where to put it. I also want not too much sticking up all over my table top again. So my dragon flies on the same side of my table as my thins of my fish, of my lily, and also the rocks. So one side of my table, It's definitely much more busy than the other. And so this is why I've put my tadpoles on the first side, the other side. To add interest there. I'm going to create some three-dimensional water weeds, just my painting onto multiple layers of resin. I'm going to start with star-shaped base layers, which are going to be the lowest leaves within the pond. And that's the point gets deeper of course, less light gets in. So these lowest leaves, I painted quite a dark green. Every leaf is going to be this star shape. But I want the higher leaves to be a brighter green so that they, it appears that they're coming up out of the water. As before, I want to make sure that my design is balanced and I want to add interest across the table top. So I carefully select where I'm going to put my water weeds so that I add this interest. I put a few over by the fish, some native alleles, some near to the tadpoles, and some on the far side in order to keep the balance, right? I don't want it too symmetrical, so I avoid that too. You can see the time painting my water weeds with a really fine brush. I'm not using a single color of green either on making sure that each leaf is unique with different amounts of green and black mixed in. Overall though these are the darkest green leaves of each water wheat plant. My little dragon fly has been made as a separate model. And it actually has paper tracing, paper wings. I want to make those slightly more resilient. And so I'm pouring resin where I pull my next resin layer onto my dragonfly wings. I pulled the resin over the top of my table top as the resin that drips off my dragonfly is going to be part of my second resin layer. I don't need to be quite so careful about where I pulled the rest in here because everything is a fixed in place. And once the second layer of resin has cured, I can paint the next leaves up on each of my water weed plants. You can see that I choose. Brighter green. And I use a small brush again in order to place each of the star light leaves almost directly on top of the ones below. I don't I'm not too careful about how closely directly on top they are. I want the water weeds to appear as though they sort of meander about as they move up through the water. And one or two of the dark leaves don't have the brighter green on top of them at all. This is where I also add a few extra tadpole swimming in a different direction on top of the other tadpoles. And I can add any other features I might like to include here as well. You might like to try to create your fish this way with multiple layers. Um, it's a powerful technique for creating three-dimensionality within your resin. To the second layer of resin, I add a few duck weed leaves, little duck weed leaves, or like come in triplets, little triangles of three little round leaves. And I've used multiple colors of green. And I make sure that some of my duckweed leaves are bigger than others. These are floating plants that dangle their roots into the water. You can't see the roots normally. And so I add interest surrounding the whole pond with these little leaves. Now this is only the second layer of resin on painting onto. So some of these will be covered on. I'm going to end up with a few duckweed leaves on top of them as well. When I'm happy with the painting on my second layer of resin, might pull a third layer of resin. My table top is only deep enough to add one further layer of resin. So this is the top layer of painting the TI can do. You can see that the water weed leaves the time adding or tiny, tiny little stars in a still brighter green. And I add them onto almost the top of every previous leaf. They won't be exactly on top. And I want to absolutely all of the water we'd underneath, but largely I cover them. I also add a few extra duck weed leaves where I feel the tiny little bit more green. Be critical of your design while you're creating it, and make sure that you're happy with the balance and composition. I add a final lily pad leaf, partly over the top of one of the other Lilypad leaves again, to give the impression of depth, I've chosen a bit of acrylic skin that has some texture to it, unlike deliberately extra holes in it. Because not all Lilypad leaves or completely smooth and complete. A little bit brighter. And final resident layer over the whole pond. It's fills completely fills this table top. And I make sure that I go round all of the edges to cover the outside edge of the lip as well, including those rushes that are stuck to the side. The resident goes down the sides and over and underneath a little bit. And I will show you in the next video how to deal with the drips that are on the bottom of the tape on top. 7. Painting the Legs: Painting legs. My legs have already been coated with black spray paint. But I wanted to add some detail to my legs in order to make it so that the legs are fitted with the palm design. So I decided I was going to put goldfish on my legs. I start off by using a gold acrylic, which you can see I'm applying with quite a large sable brush. And I am making a smooth shape, which approximates to the same shape as the modal fish that I made to go on the tabletop. I make sure that I use the same swirling motion to create the thins and give that impression of movement. I'm not worried if I leave some swirls so that a little bit of black paint underneath is visible through this. This gives the impression that the fence or a thin enough to let light through. Once I finished and all of the gold acrylic is dry, I can then go on to our little orange scales in exactly the same way as I did with the modal fish. The scales are not all the same size and they reply, I apply them with a very small brush. The scales are arranged so that they cover the body of the fish, but I leave the head and at least the fins of his sacred out scales. Once hold the scale sedan. I can then move on to using my orange paint to create swirls on the fins. And then I move on to the other colors, black and white again too, give this impression of movement of the fins. I spread my fish and of approximately evenly over all three if the tripod legs and also on the upright, it's quite difficult drawing on these really very curved surfaces. Just takes a little bit of practice. Take your time, um, and if you make mistake, the painted surface underneath, you can just wipe the credit coughs no mosquito it before it dries. Once I'm happy with my multiple layers of orange and white so I can move on to black. This is less forgiving and once you've already put down some acrylic paint, you can't wipe it off in the same way quite so easily. So use a very fine brush. Take your time, make sure that you don't make your mistakes too many mistakes when you're applying such a contrasting color. Moving the table legs so that you've got something to lean you hands-on when you're applying this paint really helps. I took the upright part of the table legs off the base in order to paint the fish on the upright parts. The next step is to add some thicker gold paint to be the blobby nurse of the eye. The top of this, I add some black in order to give the pupil of the eye. But I want a little bit of three-dimensionality. So my goal, this a bit blobby. The black pupils that I add are incredibly fine and painted on with the finest paint brush that I have. Again, take your time. Once all of the i's been painted on, I move on to paint the mouths of these goldfish. These gold fish are being seen from the side. And so you get up sort of half-moon downwards. I'm curve to the mouth of each goldfish. They look slightly, slightly miserable. If you want to make your goal official could be happier, then there's no reason why you have to make your goldfish look like real goldfish. You could make her smile if you want. I use a bit of copper paint mixed with gold in order to create the and the gill covers. And I move on with an even finer orange brush to make the fine scales to just improve the detail on each of my goldfish. Finally, when you're happy with all of your goldfish and all of the details to put it the table legs together but only loosely. And use a clear lacA to spray over the top in order to make sure that the acrylic paint doesn't pay or chip off. The lacquer is applied in exactly the same way as any other spray paint 20 centimeters away. Keep the CAN moving, make sure your layers onto thick so that you don't get runs. A word of warning. Not all lockers are compatible with all spray paints. And it's possible that you end up with a crazy spray paint layer underneath if you feel if you happen to have an incompatible lacA. So test it in a small area or on another piece of wood so that you can see whether or not your paints and lockers are compatible. I only loosely put the two parts of the legs together so that the lac I can get in the crack between the, the, the upright and the tripod table likes at the bottom. And so that I get a complete sealing layer over every part of the table legs. 8. Finishing Your Table: There are various ways to deal with the bottom of your table top. If you were sensible enough to mask off the bottom with some masking tape before you started pouring resin. Then with a little bit of heat, you can just pull off the masking tape and have a nice smooth bottom till table. On this occasion though I didn't do that. And so I've got some drips of resin leaking round onto the bottom of my table. In order to deal with this, I've had to completely mask off the front of the table after it's completely cured with some plastic to make sure that I don't end up with dust on my top surface. I want to make sure that I don't damage my facial, my rocks on my dragonfly. And so I put it on a soft surface in order to preserve the feature sticking out. And I use a an electric sander to sand off all of the drips and all any remaining varnish that leftover from refurbishing this table tone. The next step is to make sure that I get rid of all of the dust. I do this with a paintbrush, just dusting it y and then wipe it down with a damp cloth. Wait for it to completely dry. And then the next step is painting it. Again. I'm going to use a BLAT spray paint in order to match the legs and the table top itself. And you need to use that smooth movement of the can to make sure that he always keeps moving. Use light strokes 20 centimeters away and multiple layers. I'll better than one thick one. Once you'll type, we'll talk and you're like so dry. The only last job to do is to put the table together. Here are a few pictures of the finished upcycled fish pond table. 9. Project: Your project. I've given you various different options as a project, although you could choose a different one yourself as well. Option 1 is to design a pond exactly like I did with color or not placing the different aspects that you want to include in your pond in the correct places, with fish or dragon flies or King fishers with frogs and flowers and bone rushes. Option 2 is to make a model fish. Practice rolling out the clay very thin for the thin lens and using gloves to avoid fingerprints. Once you've made your fish, let it dry, or if you've chosen to use a polymer clay, dry it in the oven, and then paint it if you like. Option three is to try making some acrylic skins and make allele, including the lily pad and the lily flower. You can cut your petals by hand or like I did use a stamp to cut out all of the petals are one. Option four is the most challenging project. This is where I'd like you to have a go at using the multiple resin layer method in order to create three-dimensionality in your artwork. You could try doing this in a dish or a plate and see whether or not you can create a water wheel. Or maybe even painting a goldfish rather than using a model like I did. Try to keep your layer thicknesses consistent. And remember that you need to build up from a darker layer at the bottom to a lighter layer at the top. Simply because that's the way the light will go in the poem to look more realistic that way. Whichever project he liked, try. Please share it with the community. As soon as you've done it. Like love to say how people get along. 10. 10Final: Final thoughts. Congratulations on reaching the end of this course. There are so many aspects of a project of this type that could be developed from this point. This little sequence shows you how I painted my dragonfly, which is made from wire and clay with printed tracing paper wings. Here I show you a few pictures of a different pong table that I made with a much larger fish and a dragonfly that's been mounted on a thin piece of acrylic which was cut to shape. The lily was made in exactly the same way as I showed you on this course. The legs of the table, however, were painted differently. I've used dragonfly wings on the base of the tabletop. And I used real leaves as stencils for spray painting the legs of the table. I hope this shows that you can do a similar project mine without it being exactly the same. And yet still really cool result. My mother uses this little table every day. If you've enjoyed this course, please follow me and checkout fuzzy comma.com to see the other La Kai do Bybi until next time.