Third Grade Auction Art Project- Wood & Resin Tray with Woodland Animals

I recently shared a post about my third graders painting woodland animals slices of wood that I was going to use for our Auction Art Project for our school's annual Gala.

If you've been waiting for an update - here it is!  

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Even before I gave the kids the slices of wood to paint on, I wanted to make sure they would fit in the bottom of the tray.  Once they were painted I laid them back in there to double check.  Wait a minute, I have 15 third graders... uh oh.

Luckily the wooden trays I purchased on Amazon came with multiple sizes, and I must of just selected the wrong one.  After some finagling... they fit!

I used some Minwax 66060000 Gel Stain , quart, Walnut to stain my cheap trays. I knew from the Amazon reviews that they were not going to stain too well, but I wanted them to look a little rustic.

Anyplace where there was glue, the stain would not cover and the cheap wood had a lot of striations that the stain could not penetrate.  Perhaps some prep before staining, like sanding the crevasses or some sort of base coat would be smart.
 

Once the stain dried, I coated the trays in generic Mod-Podge.  Also known as Sargent Art Lamination Glue I tried to use the Mod-Podge, but couldn't get the jar open.  The Sargent Art Lamination Glue doesn't smell as bad.

I also coated the tops of my students' paintings with the clear coat.  You have to make sure you coat the entire surface area of the clear coat, or once you apply the resin it may become discolored. 

I used the Sargent Art Lamination Glue to secure the wood slices to the inside of the tray.  This wasn't a good idea.  Even though I had made sure the wood slices fit before I stained and clear-coated the pieces, I was having a heck of a time getting everything to fit once again.  I kept having to peel pieces up, push them down, pry pieces of bark off... it was a mess and it ruined my manicure.  Oh yeah, and it made the bottom of my tray very bumpy and gluey textured.

The next time I make a wood and resin tray, I will make sure all the Sargent Art Laminating Glue is dry, put the pieces in, and lift them up one at a time and glue them with E6000 or something.

Once everything was secure and dry (the next day) I decided to try my hand at applying a resin coat.  I used EnvirotexLite Pour on Resin This was super easy to use.  I had it in my head that I would have to be mixing and stirring powders together - but it was all liquid.

I poured equal parts of the resin and hardener into party cups.  Mix them into one cup and stir and scrape for 2 minutes. Pour to the other cup - stir for one minute. 

I poured the first coat onto my tray and concentrated on filling the spaces between the wood slices.   Every five minutes or so I would go check on it and pop the air bubbles.  It said in the directions that your breath would pop them - but I used the end of a paintbrush.

I left the tray on my work table to harden.  I was paranoid someone was going to knock it over, put something on it, or somehow let sawdust loose and ruin the whole thing… but it was fine.

24 hours later I mixed and stirred and mix and stirred and applied a second layer of resin.

I really wanted the bottom of the tray to be level and thought I could get away with two coats - but no such luck.

24 hours after that… I applied my third layer.

I knew this had to be the last layer so I really worked on making sure the resin was level.  Once I filled in all the pits and tried to get it as level as possible, I had to let it cure for 72 hours.

FINALLY, it was done. 

Update 4/11/21