How To Make A Bird Bath With Resin And Hand Painted Sola Wood Flowers

Supplies:

Bird bath from Hoby Lobby, Spring décor section.

Resin. This is the one I use. (I would recommend using a UV resin and UV light at least for your base layer)

Sola wood flowers or fake flowers would also work

A little greenery (just about two leaves depending on what you like)

Acrylic paint in the color or colors you want your flowers to be

Paint from for details and to mix paint with water

Old containers to mix paint and water in, and to hold flowers as they dry.

I purchased this bird bath from Hoby Lobby. It was in their Spring décor section. As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to put resin in it to make it look like it was filled with water.

I started off by making some sola wood flowers to float in my resin. I had these mini sola wood flowers that reminded me of water lilies, that I thought were perfect for this piece. I started out by coloring two flowers a light pink color. I then decided to hand paint a little darker pink on the tips of the petals to add a little more color and detail to the flowers. Finally, I hand painted a little yellow in the center of my flowers. When I hand paint details on, I put a little paint on my paint brush, then I dip that paint brush into my extra water. This helps water down my paint without having to mix a lot of paint and water for a very small piece. I really love how these flowers turned out! If you are interested in a short video of how I dip color my flowers and to see a rough estimate of water to paint ratio I use, then click here to go to a short YouTube video I made.

I waited a day for my flowers to dry and to make sure they did not need any touch ups. I mixed my resin together and pourer it into my bird bath. I then placed my two flowers into the resin. It still needed something. So, I cut a few leaves off a branch I had and placed them around my flowers. I was so excited with how it turned out, and could not wait for the resin to harden so I could take pictures and put it out on display in my house.

The next morning I went to check on my piece. To my surprise all the resin was gone! It had seeped into the cracks, that I had not even noticed before. The creaks now seem a lot more noticeable and pronounced. They were there for a design look, it was not broken. The flowers were hardened in place to the bird bath. So, I could not remove them. I mixed and poured more resin into my bird bath, but it was a little harder this time, because I did not want to get any resin on my flowers. I also had to make sure the area around the flowers got plenty of resin without getting any resin on the flowers themselves.

If you want to make this same project, then I recommend using UV resin instead of a 2-part resin. UV resin uses a UV light to cure it/make it harden. It only takes a few minutes under the UV light to cure, versus the 2-part resin, which takes about a day to fully cure. You can also use sunlight to cure UV resin, but it will take longer than using the UV light. However, curing UV resin in sunlight is still faster than waiting for 2-part resin to cure. I would recommend using UV resin to at least cover the base of the bird bath so the resin cannot seep into the cracks. Since UV resin cures so fast, you can seal these cracks with this resin before it has time to seep into the cracks. Once these creaks are sealed, you can finish filling the bird bath with either UV or 2-part resin.

There are a few imperfections now after I had to redo my resin, but I still really love this piece. For example, now my flowers sit a little further down in the water/resin than I wanted them too. I must have set this piece on something which made it lean a little, because the resin seems to be more to one side, instead of being centered in the bird bath. This seems to be more noticeable in pictures than in person. I think once I start to forget about the troubles I had with this piece, these things will not bother me anymore. Over all I still really love this piece, and am happy with how it turned out. Now to find the perfect place to display it.