 Hi everyone. My name is Carmen Darley. I'm here at the Art Resin headquarters and today we're going to teach you how to make some tier trays. Here with me I have Hannah and she's going to be following along through the process and helping me out to make these tier trays. Hannah, are you excited? Yes, I'm super excited. Great, let's get started. First, you need to make your plates. Once you have your plates, then you can assemble it with your hardware of your choice. But first Hannah, let's talk a little bit about the molds that we're going to use today. Can you pass me that small one? Sure. Great. So this is a pre-made silicone mold. These are store bought. You can buy them online and they come with the little nub already. So what's great about this is you don't actually have to drill the hole. Okay, so thank you so much. These ones are homemade and they're made with parchment paper or you can use shower curtains or vinyl, anything that doesn't stick to the resin that's made with caulking silicone. So very easy to make. We're also going to go through how you can drill the holes with these type of molds and how you can make the molds itself. So are you ready to make some resin and get to it? Yeah, let's do it. Great. Okay first, we're going to go ahead and make the homemade version. What you'll need is parchment paper, a pencil. So what you want to do is go ahead and sketch out your shape. I like my shapes to be a little bit, you know, organic. So I'm going to go ahead and sketch out just the quicker one of one and then the second one. If you're making a three-tier tray, make sure there's two centimeters difference from the biggest one to the middle one to the to the largest one. So I'm going to make two for the two-tier tray. What we're going to use to make them, as I mentioned earlier, is the silicone caulking. Okay, so this is 100 silicone. I did choose the low-odor one just because, you know, if you want to use it indoors and all you have to do now is trace the line with the silicone and you just tighten the little part there and you got your first mold. What you want to do is you want to add a second layer. So if you want, you can let this dry for about three hours so it's a little bit harder. If you feel comfortable, you can go ahead and do the second layer right now. And one tip for you is when you are cutting the tip, make sure that you are cutting it at the widest part. So you know how it tapers? Make sure that you're cutting it at the widest part and that way it'll ensure that you have a nice and thick line to hold all your resin in place. So let's go ahead and make the second one. Again, we're going to go ahead and trace the lines that you've drawn and then make sure that the connection is fully covered with silicone and that way there's no leakage of the resin through the mold. So you have your first layer. I'm going to go ahead and do the second layer. The silicone coming out is nice and thick. And there you have it, your very own homemade mold to any shape and any size that you like with silicone and parchment paper. Now that the homemade molds are completed, we still need to wait 24 hours for the silicone part to completely dry and harden. So we're going to set this aside and I'm going to use those molds that I made earlier. All right, I have my molds ready. Hannah, you're going to be using the store-bought molds today. So let's get creative. Do you happen to have some art resin? I do. I have some right here. Perfect. Let's mix them up. For Hannah's project, she's going to use dry floral. You can use the ones that are store-bought or what's really great is you can actually dry your own. So if it's of sentimental value to you, these flowers can actually be preserved with resin, which has been really, really popular with a lot of resin artists for the resin projects. Now you can also use embellishments such as cellophane, gold foil, and some glitter. And these are all optional. The project that I'm going to do is more of a marble effect. So it gives you that whole delicate marble look and feel, but without that shatter easy to break material. Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to start with the resin. Remember, it's one part resin, one part hardener. It really doesn't matter if you start with the resin or the hardener. Just make sure it's one part of each and it's by volume and not by weight. So we have a two cup measuring cup here and I'm going to fill this the resin first and fill it all the way to the one cup mark. Make sure it's right on the line. And then now what we're going to do is top it up to a two cup line. Okay, this is great. All right, now Hannah, do you want to do the honors and do a lot of stir? Sure. So I'm going to stir it up and you do have to make sure you're going to mix it for three full minutes and scrape the sides and the bottom as you go just so you make sure everything's mixed perfectly. While Hannah's stirring, I do want to mention that you can really use your creativity when it comes to making these tear trays. You could, you know, make different products and colors. This is more of a seascape, right, kind of look and feel and then this is more of a, you know, carousel holographic or a boreal kind of look and feel. So you don't necessarily always have to use flowers or do a marble tray. You could really, you know, take your creativity to the next level and even add crystals and embellishment to give that real geo luxury look. All right, so this is all mixed up now. So what are we doing next? So we're actually going to start with your project first with the materials that's in front of you. Okay, so when I go to pour, do I pour the resin into the tray first and then poke the embellishments in on top or do you recommend laying them down into the tray and then pouring resin on top of them? It really comes down to your personal preference. If you want to do it one way or the other, it really doesn't matter. Personally, I do like to pour the resin first and then throw in my embellishments. So yeah, it's really up to you. All right, I think I'll go with it the way you suggested then. So I'm going to go and pour it if that's all right. Yeah, go for it. Let's do it. Let's create and make some magical flower trays. All right, now that you have the resin poured into the mold, we're going to start embedding some of the florals into the resin. So there's two ways that you could do it. You could either take a stir stick, dip a little bit of resin to have on the stir stick, and then pick up your floral this way. You see that, right? And then you go directly into it, press it down and you see how the resin is going right on top of it? So you're really just covering the flower. Alternatively, you could also pick it up with the tweezer. So for this piece, we'll place it right here. Just drop it on. You'll still need to use a stir stick. But if you feel more comfortable and secure picking it up with the tweezer, you can go ahead and do that. But there you have it. It's nicely embedded into your resin piece and you can drop as many pieces of dry floral as you like. It's cool. All right. So should I give it a shot? Go ahead. Give it a shot. All right. I think I'm liking the popsicle stick method for the florals. Place it however you feel comfortable. And can you move them around in the resin still after they've been placed? Yeah, you could just slightly, not too much, just in case the dry florals are pretty delicate. So you don't want to move it too much because they may break apart. But otherwise, if you're embedding other objects that are more solid, you can move them around. Okay, that's good. It's looking really good. So placement wise, it's really up to you. This is fun. Okay, so if I really want the top tier to pop, do you think adding gold leaf would help do that? Yeah, I think adding the gold leaf will be great. So if you can pass that over to me, I will show you some ways that you can add them. You can either pull them apart with a tweezer again. I do prefer myself personal preference. Again, I just pull some from from the gold leaves. And I just go ahead and mix it in there. Nice, that looks so good. So actually, this is one of the easier ways to add embellishment where you like it. So if you really like your top tier to pop, you can just grab some, go ahead and mix it in. Cool. It already makes such a big difference being in there. It really adds a little shine to it. And you can add gold leaves, you can add silver leafing or copper leafing. It really is up to you. Okay, perfect. So now what? So now what we're going to do is get rid of the bubbles that you see on your piece. So if you have a torch, we're going to torch it and get rid of some bubbles. All right. So how close do you stay to the edge when you torch? I typically stay towards the middle because I don't want to torch the silicone too much. So I'm really just staying right on top to get rid of the bubbles really quickly. Perfect. Oh, that looks so much better. It looks really nice and clear. It's looking really good. Great. That looks really, really good Hannah. I can't wait to see the finished product. And while you were doing that, I actually separated my resin. So we're going to start doing the marbling technique. First, with marbling techniques, it's typically majority of the coloring is white. You can marble with different shades and color, depending on the effect that you're looking for. I'm doing the very typical, you know, marble black and white and bronze-y look. So I have white, black and a bronze here. What I'm going to do is first, make sure when you're mixing pigments into your resin that it's no more than 6%. I typically like to just start off with very little and then add on to it because a little bit of color goes a long way. And remember one thing, you can always add more color or you can't take away the color. So adding a little bit at a time is probably a better bet. So I'm going to go ahead and mix it and make sure you're mixing and scraping the bottom so that all the pigments and the colors are added to your resin. So I'm going to start with the black now. This is a nice and deep black. Again, just start with a little bit. And again, scrape your sides and your bottom to make sure that the pigment is well mixed into your resin. Now we're going to go with the bronze. Give it a good shake. Any metallics, I recommend that you give it a nice shake because it's got that little, you know, the metallic pieces and pigments in there. So you want to have it well mixed in the bottle already. Great. So these are all the colors that we really need for the marbling effect. Okay, so we're going to go ahead and pour the white first. I start in the middle, then I do a circular motion. This way I'm covering all the surface at the same time. And remember, one thing to always keep in mind is making sure that you wait 24 hours for your silicone mold to dry completely so that it's completely hard. Now I'm going to take the black and start detailing it. Marble has very undefined lines. So I'm going to start marbling it. So you take some of your black and remember, marble is a natural stone. It's not meant to look very straight. So even if you drip a little bit of black on your other areas, it's 100% okay. And again, use your imagination and your creativity. Marbles, as you can see in the store, they're never in a consistent pattern. So you can do a bit of your twists. You can continue to dip a little bit more black. So you're starting to see the marble effect take shape. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to stop here and I'm going to go into using the bronze. A little bit of just that texture to it. I'm not going to use too much. I'm going to go back into it with the black just to cover that bronze a little bit to make it look really natural. So we're going to let this sit for a bit, giving you that marble effect. Okay. Now what we're going to do is let this sit and then we're going to move on to the smaller piece. Now remember, this is going to be your top piece and this is the piece that's probably going to hold some of the items on the top. And so you want this piece to be a little bit thicker, not too thick because you also want your hardware to go through it after you drill it. I'm going to go ahead and do a circular motion. Do the wiggly, do the little spiral. If you've seen marble, sometimes they have darker pieces and sometimes they have very light, faint pieces. Okay. So that's it. Now you have the full marble effect. We're going to let it sit. But before we do that, we need to get rid of some of that bubble. So I can have the torch Hannah. Thank you so much. So really quickly, test your torch. It's great. I'm just going to go in and get rid of the bubbles. Now that we got rid of some of the bubbles, the torch actually brings out some of that marbling effect, which is great because once it's cured, you'll really be able to see that marble inspired look. So thanks so much Hannah. So now that these are done, our projects are complete for the day. We're going to set these aside, but we've got to learn how to drill the holes into the pre-made pieces because we still need to assemble it and use the hardware of our choice to kind of make that project come to life. All right. So now we're at the final steps of making this tier tray. We're going to learn how to assemble it and drill the holes. Now we're going to fast forward a little bit because we're the pieces that we made earlier are being cured right now. So we're going to work on the pieces that we pre-made. Here we have ones that were made with a store-bought mold and then here is one that does not have a hole in it and we're going to learn how to drill the hole. Okay. So let's drill this piece first. Let's talk a little bit about the hardware that you get. So these hardware are purchased from Amazon, a more any online store to make sure that the hole is big enough for this piece to go through. You would take the drill bit and match it. So that looks like it's a great fit. So now that I know this is the size for my drill bit, in order for you to not crack your piece, you start off with a smaller hole. So this is significantly smaller. So this sets the stage for you to drill a bigger hole. Now before you drill, I typically just eyeball it, but you can also measure it. So this is about four and a half inches and so right at the middle would be around two and a quarter. So that would be your middle part. You can also measure it this way, which is around three inches and right there that is your middle point. So we're going to go ahead and start drilling. Make sure you have a really good grip on one side. Direct go directly on top and just go ahead and drill. Go slowly and there you go. Now you're going to go on top of this hole and because the hole is already pre-drilled, it should go in very easy and there you go and your piece should go right through because you've already measured. So let's move on to the next piece and there you have it. Now that my holes are drilled, I'm ready to assemble and I'm going to get Hannah to demold her project and have her assemble with me. So this, as you can see, this is the one that is store bought and has the pre-drill holes with the little nut. So I'm going to go ahead and do the top first. So they come with washers, so make sure you have the washer. You can do that with three. And then the bottom part, you have the bottom screw, the screwdriver and there you have it. We have two completed tier sand projects, a floral inspired and an ocean inspired project. How did you like it? I had so much fun. Thank you for sharing it with me. That's great. So stay tuned because Hannah is going to go ahead and work on the projects that we made earlier. She's going to unmold it and assemble it so you guys can see the final product. That's it for me for now, but thanks for having me and I hope to see you guys soon. Bye for now. Since the upper tiers have no backing, we recommend placing heavier items on the bottom layer. Hey guys, I'm back. As Carmen mentioned, I'm here today to reveal the final project for you guys. They look so good. They're nice and hardened now. So we've got the marble ones all cured as well as the flower tray. So I'm going to demold them and put them together. After I demolded, I noticed the edges were a little bit rough. So I went in and used an exacto knife and carved around it just to clean them up a little bit. Okay, so here they are demolded now. The flower one looks great. The colors really popped inside the resin know that they're cured. And the marble one also looks amazing. The colors have settled out a little bit from when we poured it, but it looks so good. And for this homemade one, we still need to drill the holes. So we're going to go ahead and do that. And then I'm going to put together the flower tray. This one has holes already made because of the mold we used. So it's going to be even easier than the last one. Here are the final trays. I think they both look amazing. I loved how Carmen turned out with the rough edge from the homemade mold along with the marble technique on the inside. I think it turns out really natural and pretty. And I loved learning how to do the flower on the gold foil inside this one. I think it also went together really well in the end. I think they both look so good and I had so much fun doing it. So I just want to thank Carmen for coming out to teach me. And I really hope you guys enjoyed the video. So thanks for watching.