 What's up guys, today I'm going to show you how to make some custom serving trays. Whatever you want to use it for is totally up to you, but we're going to do one Sprinkles themed... It is kind of a tongue twister. Sorry, let me do it again. This one we're going to do a Sprinkles themed one, and this one we're actually going to use a silicone mold with stars to make that one. Two different techniques. I don't know how this silicone one is going to work, but that's the fun. That's what we're going to do today is have some fun, see if it works. And if it doesn't, how can we fix it to make it work? Woo, it's going to be so fun. Let's go through the items that you're going to need. A mixing bucket, some mixing cups, and that's for the resin. A glue gun and some glue sticks. We got some scissors, an exacto knife. You're going to need some foam core, a marker, we're using some tuck tape. This stuff works really great when it comes to resin. Resin will not stick to this stuff. Today we're going to be using a 32 ounce kit of Art Resin, the original resin tints from Art Resin. We're going to use the metallic white on the metallics kit as well. The style that I'm going to go with because this is a serving tray, I thought it'd be kind of fun to incorporate a food item, a baking item. So we're going to use some sprinkles. I love using sprinkles in the resin because it gives a nice pop of color and they're super easy to work with. And one star tray, of course, some gloves, some stir sticks, and a good attitude because we're going to have some fun. Oh, and sorry, add some trays. Totally ruined that ending. Let's get started. For our first tray, we're going to go with a silver and black theme and then we're going to have sprinkles act as the pop of color for this. So shiny. You got to get the squeak. Yeah, it's official, it's legit. For this first one, I'm going to put my initials on this tray. You guys can put anything if you want the whole classic live laugh love theme. You can do that. But for the sake of today's video, I'm just going to do my initials, which is DJR. We've got some foam core. So what we're going to do is we're going to lay down the foam core, flip the tray upside down. Grab your marker and just to know what sort of spacing and surface that we have to work with, we're going to make a circle around our tray. One thing to consider is if this tray actually has a lip, just make sure that we stay within that line. Okay. So this right here is basically our mold. So anything that you guys want to have is a different color of resin or in our case, sprinkles. You're going to draw it out here. So for me, I'm going to go ahead and draw out my initials. This is what I'm thinking for the tray. Everything around this is going to be black. You're going to have the silver lip, which will look really nice. You'll have the black resin base of our tray. And we've got my initials, DJR, which are going to be in sprinkles. So it's going to be in resin still, but it's going to be separate from the black background. So now we've got our design drawn out. We're going to cut this out using the Xacto knife. Just be careful because foam core, you can slip, you can cut yourself, so just go slow and you're going to thank yourself because the detail won't take a hit either. Okay. Actually, before we do anything, you're going to want to get a cutting mat to protect your surface. We're using this beautiful pink one. This is great. And now you're just going to cut along the lines of whatever you drew out. So we've done one pass over our letters. It's not going to come out easy. And in fact, it might come out with other pieces. Don't worry. We're going to clean that up with scissors right after. Okay. So now we've got our letters here. This piece of the foam core, we're going to set aside. I have done a first cut. In fact, I've cut through 70% of this foam core. I'm going to go in with scissors now and just get more detailed pieces. I'm going to individually cut out each piece. Right there, we've got the R. Now some of these letters are going to take a little bit more work when they have like the centered holes like that, but take more time for this stage so the tray will actually look better in the end. Boom. Boom. Ka-boom. Perfect. Okay. So we've got our letters. So we're now going to take our foam core again. We're now just going to trace around because essentially what we're trying to do here is we're trying to make an exact copy or to make it a little bit thicker. So I know this part looks very tedious, but this is the longest part of the entire process. Just keep that in mind when you guys are picking a design. So if you're doing a logo or you're going to try to do somebody's face, this will take the longest time, but it's worth it because you're going to have a piece that will last years and years and years. You could serve snacks on all kinds of fun snacks. Nuts. You're going to love these. I feel like the slap chop guy. You're going to love my nuts. Okay. So we've got essentially duplicates. Now one of them is going to be a little bit bigger than the other, and if that's the case, you want to put that on the bottom. You want the pretty cut out letters on top because the resin is going to follow that shape. We want it to look good. So here we go. DJR. Next step. Now that we have our design cut out in foam core, we are going to first glue the two layers together and then we're going to use some tuck tape and cover this entire letter in tuck tape. The reason being is resin won't actually stick to this stuff, and we want to be able to pull these letters out once our first pork hears. Boom. Now I know you're thinking that, damn, oh, it's wrinkly on the back. Do not worry. Anything below half of this is going to be black resin, so you're not going to see any of the blemishes. As long as there's at least a smooth shape formation, it'll be totally fine. All right. Now here's the big moment, the tray. You want to make sure it's lined up or placed wherever you want to put it. I'm going to start with the J, just so I can center it. Does that look centered to you? Yeah, it looks good. Okay. Now let's go ahead and glue the D. Lucky for us, the hot glue is actually holding the letters. So essentially what we've done here is we've made a mold. We are now going to pour black resin around it and inside the little holes in the letters. Let that cure. Take these guys out and pour our second color. Before we actually get to pouring this, I'm going to show you guys the second technique using silicone, and we're going to do the pour at the same time for both. So at this point, you want to place down your silicone shapes. So for us, we're using stars, and I have them all sort of spiral into the center. So now that we have our stars placed, we're going to, we're going to see what happens right now. I actually don't know what's going to happen here. We're going to hot glue the silicone stars to the bottom of the tray. If that doesn't work, we'll put weights inside and that'll for sure work. So yeah, let's see if this works. Put them back. Okay. If only you guys knew what I've been through. So here's the thing about silicone. Nothing wants to stick to it, and silicone doesn't want to stick to anything. So I've tried a whole bunch of things to try to get our star molds to stick to this tray, including hot gluing it down. Nope. Rubber cement. Nope. Blue tack. Nope. Tape. Nope. Nothing's working. So what I'm going to do is I've placed silicone stars on the tray where I want them. I've got these little stones from a garden outside and I'm actually just going to use them as little weights and put them in the silicone stars to see if maybe there's enough weight that when one of the resin goes in, it's not actually lifting it up. So we're not out of the woods yet. We're going to test it out. Hopefully they do not float. So let's go ahead and weigh them down with some stones. It feels sort of like trick or treating like one stone for you. So what you're thinking, whoa, Dan, where did that like rough patch come from? Guys. Okay. This was a mix of hot glue that wouldn't come up. So I used a heat gun. It just melted it and I tried scraping it off and then it spread the glue everywhere. I'm sure if you guys are crafters, you know this happens. Not a concern because we're going to be pouring resin on top. It's going to cover it all. You only really learn when you fail. Okay. They're in place. Fingers crossed. The resin does not make our silicone stars float. We'll see. Now for the final step of day one, we're going to do our resin pour. So right here we're going to use a 32 ounce kit of art resin, 16 for our one tray and 16 for the other, eight ounces of hardener, and eight ounces of resin. And then we're going to mix both of them into a larger bucket. Good rule of thumb here is you want to stir relatively slowly for three minutes. You don't want to put any air in here. Although with trays, it's not a huge deal because we can actually use a heat gun and pop them out. Another thing is you want to make sure you're scraping the sides and the bottom to get all the resin mixed with the hardener. Now at this stage, we're going to take some black resin tints. I don't want this to be transparent at all so we're just going to use like one, two big squirts. Mix it in. We'll see. Do another three, four, five, and a good way to check actually you take your stir stick and lift it up and if you can see the stick below, that's how you can check the transparency of the dye. And then we're ready for our pour. So we're going to pour about halfway up this tray, not covering our letters. You've got to make sure that you can still see it and it's still above the resin surface. So let's do it. So the D and the R both have holes in them. So we're going to take our stir stick and we're just going to help guide resin to fill inside of there. Okay. One of my personal favorite parts about working with resin is actually popping the bubbles and watching them all disappear. One thing I've learned is that when it's super aerated resin, one pass with a torch isn't actually going to do enough. So I'm going to leave it for about five minutes, let more of the bubbles come to the top, run it again, and then that should be fine. So far so good. It looks great. Yeah. All right. On to tray number two. All right. Train number two. It seems like 24 ounces is the magic number for these trays. So we're going to pour all of this resin in. Three minutes starts now. All right. So for this one, I felt like a sort of a pearl or metallic white in this case is going to look really good with the gold background. So we're using a lot of resin in this one. So probably going to need about six, like one, two, three, four, five, six. Because it's a white, it's actually going to take a little bit more dye to hide the background color. We don't want this to be like a goldy white. We want this to be a white white. And adding the metallic, it adds some just like nice vibes. So the rule of thumb when you're actually adding tints to resin is you don't want to do more than 6%. And I know you're watching going, Dan, you just used an entire bottle. Yeah. But you know what? I'm feeling a little zany today. Nice vibes. It'll still work. It's just the rule of thumb is no more than 6%. Okay. Here we go. Will it float? I don't be too aggressive with it. They're not floating. The rock technique is working. It's not just a flat color. You can almost see where the pore has gone and it's, oh my gosh, this is so nice. It just, it makes it a little bit more regal when you're adding the metallic colors. It's holding. The stars are all aligned. Now we're going to hit it once with a torch, give it to the bubbles. That's pretty much it for today. It's been a really good day. This one is a little bit more of an experimental thing, but the good news is you guys and myself will be learning from this process. We're going to cover them and we'll be back in the morning. So I'll see you guys bright and early to reveal our trays. Bye. Day two. Oh, buddy, this is the big, big, big reveal. Let's check out our first tray. This is the one that we did with my initials. I'm pretty straight forward. So the pore worked out great. Super shiny. No bubbles. Okay. The other one is out. How are we going to do that? No problem. We'll figure it away. The other thought is, you know, the tape kind of went rogue on this side and I'm wondering if that's actually going to bring up a little bit of the resin with it. That's also not a concern because we could fix that with, with more resin. That's the beauty of this thing. So super happy with this. Look at that shine. Woo. Nice. I'm really happy with how this turned out. Okay. Oh, buddy, this is the big reveal. You know, this is the one from yesterday that we thought maybe this isn't going to work. It's a road of sort of unfamiliarity, but that's the way I like to do crafts, arts and crafts. It's a good way to actually learn new techniques. So here we go. Genuinely, I have not seen what this is. I just figured there's an issue with it because when I got here this morning, it's been covered in this box that has paper so I can't actually see it. And everyone's looking at me. It's like, oh, there's that guy that did that tray. I'm like, something's up. You know, if I don't look technically, it's not a fail. Oh, it worked out. Oh, this actually worked out. I was under the impression this wasn't going to work, but this turned out great. Yes. Yes. See, this is the thing about crafts. Okay. When you take risks and it actually works out, you get this feeling of like, mm, it works and it feels so good. It looks like marble. Yes. You guys freaked me out, man. You know, we took a risk with the silicone, not knowing if it's going to float by the resin overnight, but the fact that it actually worked, it's amazing because nothing sticks to silicone. So this is going to be super easy to remove and then we're going to fill in the stars with a different colored resin. Yes. Yes. I was so worried the video was going to go up and it was like, who's this guy? It's like both trays were a huge fail. Oh, that is great. I can't wait to finish that one. All right. So the next step today is we are going to remove our shapes. So we're going to start with the DJR platter. Keep in mind, these is just foam core. So it should be relatively easy to sort of remove it or dissect it. And it's perfect because we have a dissection kit, which slightly weird, but I'm sure it'll do the job great. It's very fragile, so we can just chisel away. Oh, buddy, there it is. Look at that. Oh. Yes. Yes. Oh. Yes. That saved us so much time. Look at that. Oh my gosh. This is working out so well. What a good feeling. So tuck tape actually came through. By looking at this, you're going to think that the bottom of the J sort of does look a little bit messy right here. If we're doing clear, that'd be a concern, but we're putting sprinkles and resin in here. So that's going to hide it perfectly. Oh, that is so good. Yes. Oh, I can't explain to you guys how satisfying it is when it just says the resin, she's like, okay, take it. Okay. So this is actually going to take a little bit of time. So I'm going to pull them out and then I'll see you guys in the next shot. And just like that, we've got all the letters out. Next step is we're going to take sprinkles and resin, put it in there and then do one final coat on top. This guy's done. Moving on to our second tray, which worked out great, is the silicone stars. And just watch this already, okay? Like so easy. So I guess what we're learning here is if you guys are going to do this and you're on like a time constraint, go with silicone like this is, oh my, that's so nice. It's like so satisfying from 40 minutes to like under a minute silicone is probably a good way to go. So the idea here is we're going to fill every star with gold dyed resin and the center star we're going to make red. Let's get to mixing some resin. We're in the home stretch. What I usually do is when I start using sprinkles, this is sort of like glitter. It gets everywhere and the second it gets into resin, it's just such a mess. So I'm actually going to do the gold tray first. We've got our resin. So by sitting in a warm water bath, it'll actually warm up the resin and reduce the bubbles when we actually mix and pour. I want to make every star on this with a gold infill. And the one in the center I want to make red have a nice pop of color. So we've got our resin tins here, probably three ounce total. So one and a half ounces of resin, one and a half ounces of hardener. And stir for three minutes because we're doing two different colors. We don't need too too much for the red. We don't need too much dye here, just enough so it's not transparent. That's the color right there. Okay, so now we're going to take this little squirt bottle and this is just to help with the control of the pour. Perfect. We are now ready to do our gold tray for slowly. And now it's time for our center star, which is going to be red. Now the stars right now are a little bit of different levels of the pouring. That's totally fine. So we're going to do actually one more top layer to finish it all off once this is hardened a bit more. That's for the most part is a completed tray. Now it's time for the sprinkles. Okay. So now what we're going to do is we're going to use six ounces total of resin. So we're going to do three ounces of resin and then we're going to use three ounces of hardener, which will bring it to a total of six ounces. That's math. Mix that for three minutes. Great. Resin's been mixed. Now let's introduce the sprinkles. Resin meets sprinkles. There's a better way to do this. You're going to need a little bit more sprinkles than you think you need. Now we're going to pour it into our letters. I need sort of like mishaps around there. We'll disappear once you do a top coat. Okay. Now we're going to hit it with the torch. That's looking good. So this one's for sure going to need a top coat. All right. This one looks good. So we've finished the sprinkles for we're going to put on one more coat tomorrow and then we have some custom serving trays. See you guys tomorrow. Day three. Oh, it looks so good. And like that top coat guys, like the beautiful thing about resin is you can fix it in so many different ways. But a nice final top coat on these guys made it so nice. Check these out. They look so good. So you guys have it. That is how you make some custom serving trays using art resin. Give it a shot. Try different things. Try different techniques. You never know what's going to work. And when it does work, it feels so good on the inside. Nice vibes. Thanks for watching this DIY later.