GREENcrafting with Amazing Crafting Products

Welcome to the blog for Amazing Crafting Products! We are so excited to be participating in LeslieRahye's Second Annual EARTH DAY Bloghop. LeslieRahye is one of the fabulous Amazing Crafting Product Creative Team Alumni and our products hold a special place in her heart as well as ours!

Susan here today making my creative return to sharing here with you on Earth Day - one of my favorite events to celebrate. I am an avid GREENcrafter and recycler and I'm always looking for creative opportunites for reusing things destined for the bin. This project is no exception!

I'm sharing a little fun how-to with you today that will make a great gift for Father's Day {or any other occasion by varying the embellishments}. I have a bag full of recycled bottlecaps from beer and soda bottles and they finally have been put to good use. These were collected at a few family events and marrying into the Brown clan, the bottlecaps pile up pretty quickly when there's a party.

This project is pretty simple and pretty fun too {and I am very good friends with Amazing Clear Cast resin now also}. First I made a mold to be my coaster shape from a shallow square candle holder that is made of glass and has nice rounded corners. It was the perfect size and shape. An alternative is a large size tuna can for round coasters, or you can glue a stack of chipboard coasters together to make a mold in Amazing Mold Putty. I made the mold and was ready to go... then things slowed down for casting in Amazing Clear Cast resin.

I prepared my surface and poured equal measurements of parts "A" and "B" and mixed following the instructions for the Amazing Casting Resin. CLICK HERE to view how-to.

**A TIP** I learned a valuable lesson the last time I embedded objects into Amazing Clear Cast - that being to paint resin onto or fill into objects prior to embedding into the freshly mixed resin. So the day before making my coasters I mixed up a batch of resin, selected and organized bottle caps to make four coasters, and filled each clean, dry bottlecap with resin to the top. This will help in weighing them down in the liquid resin and help prevent them from moving around.

So I poured about 3/8" resin into my rounded square mold, then placed a bottle cap into the resin after painting the top of the bottlecap with a dollop of resin {this prevents air bubbles getting captured underneath. I repeated for all nine bottlecaps, placed in a grid pattern, and added a little more resin over the top to slightly cover the bottlecaps.

Then the real work begins...you NEED to hang around and hover over your work for about 45 minutes to an hour until the resin begins getting thick. Regardless of what I did, one or two kept taking a walk around the bottle cap party. My first coaster poured, I watched for about a half-hour and it wasn't long enough. I thought it was and I went on my merry way. I returned an hour later and one of the bottlecaps had moved away from the others. The resin was already solidified, too late to move it back. So for the remaining three, I was on RESIN-WATCH and I stayed put to watch the resin set. I kept myself busy by making extra resin and filling other molds while every few minutes pushing a cap back in it's place. So now Amazing Clear Cast and I are brand new "Besties"... and I learned a lot by repeating this process four times. Working with Amazing Clear Cast resin is not a QUICK-result and requires patience and precise measuring... but the results are AMAZING!!!

Now I have a set of these awesome handmade coasters for a Father's Day gift and tons of other projects cast that I can't wait to share. I might make a special set for MOM too with vintage buttons or jewelry bits and bobs - or fill with fun goodies for kids.

I hope you enjoyed today's project. I encourage you to stroll around through the many AMAZING projects from our Creative Team members for some great tips and ideas! If you would like to see more of my creations, please visit my blog sbartist : painting in the dark by clicking here.  ~ Susan

Please scroll down to click on the squares below to continue to all the fantastic artists on the blog hop.