ENCASED IN LOVE
WEDDING BOUQUET COASTERS
DIY GET CRAFTY WITH NICOLE
Hi! I’m Nicole and delighted to be joining the AH team to share my DIY projects and hopefully inspire you to try some new crafts, home décor, and explore your creativity, all while sourcing items and materials available to us in rural Nova Scotia.
I love a project that not only has meaning but also produces something functional. As an admirer of resin art, I wanted to try my hand at a new-to-me medium. After COVID disrupted our original wedding plans, my partner and I decided to do a small pop-up wedding in February. While we still focused on what mattered to us, it meant we gave up some of the touches a large, traditional ceremony may have. This prompted a desire to get crafty with a few unique ideas to make our day special and truly ours. When the wedding celebration was over, I looked at ways that I could capture and preserve this wonderful moment—so I got crafty with my wedding bouquet. If you’re looking for a clean and quick craft, this is not the project for you. The process was done over many days as you need to mix and prepare the resin, allowing it to set for a full day. I’ll leave the details to science, but essentially you
mix two compounds from a kit, giving you a thick liquid that takes about 24 hours to set—and once it is set it’s solid. The medium gives you the opportunity to encase special items. For flowers, there are a few options: you can press them so they’re flat, or, as I did, hang the flowers to dry, then use full or crushed petals and leaves. I saw some neat ideas of people encasing things like Polaroid photos (how cool would old film strips be?), pet tags, and other meaningful items.
MATERIALS: • Resin kit—uses an A and B mixing ratio (full instructions included), gloves, mixing cups and sticks • Silicone mould (shape of the item you’re setting in resin, I used a coaster mould) • Item you’re encasing (flowers, photos etc.) This was a new style of crafting for me, and I loved exploring this process, and learned a few tips as well: you can use a hairdryer to remove any air bubbles, and if you want to lay things in a certain pattern it’s best to do a small base layer, arrange your items and let it harden before adding the second layer to fully encase it. We look forward to cheering many anniversaries for years to come on these special additions to our home.
happy crafting! PHOTO BY STEVE SMITH, VISIONFIRE STUDIOS The North Shore
ah! Fall 2021 - 50
