So, in my introductory post I shared a photo of a tree I’d cut/engraved/scored from some of the proofgrade maple ply:
I wanted to do something more with it, and decided I wanted to try my hand at resin work, so here’s how things have progressed:
Note: I’m very much a person who needs the project to tell me what happens next, so while I had an idea where I wanted this to go, I kinda felt my way through it. Initially I was going to do layered clear resin with acrylic painting, but once I decided I wanted to make the sky sunset colors, I decided the piece should ultimately be in a back-lit frame.
Anyway…
Because the plywood was warped (I mean, it was -billion degrees and dry as heck here in MN, so all wood shipping here is less than fabulous right now) I cut out a rectangle of clear acrylic and epoxied the wood to the acrylic. Then I filled in a layer of clear resin to seal each cut section and prevent seeping:
That was yesterday. Then I had to let it cure for 24 hours So to pass the time, I did a quick color-up plan (coloring is possibly my least favorite of the crafts - my daughter could color better than me at age 2):
I based this on sunset photos I’ve taken (I DO love photography!)
This morning I FINALLY got to start adding color. I used food coloring to color the resin so it would be transparent:
And this is where it is with the second layer in (note: the clouds are way cooler than what you can see in the picture, but I couldn’t get a good angle because of the lights in my room and trying to avoid glare):
(I’ll take a better shot tomorrow once I can move it upright and place it in better lighting!)
My thoughts now: Let it cure for the night and see what I want to do in the morning. I’m thinking I’d like to add very small brush strokes of gold in the tree, but I am not 100% on that. If not, I’ll fill it in with clear resin and get to work on the frame.