Once you have your outline ready lay the paper on a flat surface. Make sure your flat surface is level. This is important because when you start pouring your colors you don’t want them to keep shifting or for your agate to have an uneven thickness. Following that over your paper apply a layer of plastic wrap or set a piece of glass on top. Cut the plastic wrap to size and tape it off making sure it’s tight and without folds. Than outline the shape of your agate with silicone on top of the plastic making sure you don’t rip the plastic.
PLASTIC WRAP UPDATE! Once you have your shape done use a popsicle stick to pull all the edges up on the inside. Make sure your silicone mold is high enough for the thickness of agate board you plan on making. Add more silicone if needed. Let your silicone mold set for at least 30-40 minutes before pouring any resin inside. ( UPDATE : I’ve tried this on plastic table cover instead of saran wrap and it works much better. Saran wrap melts too fast from the heat. )
HOW TO MAKE THE WHITE RESIN AGATE BOARD : This agate board is all about layers. It’s a really simple concept and you will only need clear resin and different shades of white resin. That’s it! I tried adding broken beads and glitter and it wasn’t looking too good. It started looking fake so I stuck to keeping it simple. Before starting this cheese board you will need to mix some resin. I mixed a total of one cup of resin. That’s half cup of resin liquid and half cup of hardener liquid.
CREATING LAYERS If too much paint is added your resin will set a lot quicker. Since I actually needed my first layer to set pretty fast I decided to take advantage of this and mixed in about 40% paint into that 1 tbs of resin. Than I used an artists knife to gently draw horizontal lines across the whole bottom of the cheeseboard.
CREATING THE SECOND LAYER ON YOUR WHITE SLICE : To create my second layer I mixed some more white resin. This time I actually did the correct paint to resin ratio. Just a speck of paint into about 1/4 cup of resin. I used this milky white resin to create diagonal lines. Then I gently poured clear resin between the lines and used my heat gun to pop any bubbles. I also used a stick to kind of gently pull my diagonal lines into the resin so they wouldn’t look like they were poured.
HOW TO CONTINUE LAYERING Because the base layer was going to be under two more layers I thought it would be okay to have very opaque white horizontal lines, however the closer the layers got to the surface the more gentle the lines needed to look to give a realistic effect. Which means I needed to add less paint in resin for more transparent milky lines and longer setting times were involved. Here’s what it looks like with the second layer complete.
Okay after about 2-3 hours of setting time your resin should be pretty tacky. This is when you’ll know it’s ready for the third layer. I mixed half a cup of resin and mixed a small batch of white resin. For the third and final layer I made diagonal lines but this time in the opposite direction from the previous layer. I then gently added the rest of the clear resin in between and popped any bubbles with the heat gun.
If you were considering trying wax paper as the base here are the results I got. The wax from the paper ended up melting into the resin which left the cheeseboard with a bunch of stuck paper. Not the best results. I ended up sanding it down later but the finish still looked rough and it took too much time to remove.
I USED ABOUT A CUP FULL OF MIXED RESIN FOR THIS LAVENDER AGATE AND SEPARATED IT INTO CUPS. A FEW SPOONS INTO EACH CUP AND LEFT ABOUT HALF A CUP OF CLEAR RESIN. THEN I ONLY USED A SPECK OF PAINT TO TINT THE RESIN AND POURED IT ONTO THE AGATE MOLD IN SECTIONS WITH CLEAR RESIN IN BETWEEN. THE RESIN COLORS WERE REALLY TRANSPARENT. I USED THE HEAT GUN TO POP THE BUBBLES AND USED MY ARTISTS KNIFE TO BLEND THE COLORS INTO EACH OTHER A LITTLE BIT.