The Resin Workshop Box

What you would make

A set of four coasters and two small trinket dishes, cast in clear epoxy with pigment and dried botanicals suspended in them.

Flat, shallow castings are the right first project. They cure evenly, they release from silicone without a fight, and the layer is thin enough that the exotherm stays gentle. Deep pours are a different craft with a different resin and a real risk of the casting overheating, cracking or yellowing, and they are not a beginner project no matter how good they look.

What would be in the box

• Epoxy resin and hardener, pre-measured into matched pairs for each pour. The ratio is the thing beginners get wrong, and the failure is total: a bad ratio does not cure slowly, it never cures at all.
• Two silicone moulds, a four-coaster tray and a two-cavity dish mould.
• Graduated mixing cups and flat stirrers, more than you think you need, because the correct technique involves decanting into a second clean cup halfway through mixing.
• Three pigments made for epoxy, plus a small quantity of pressed botanicals that have been properly dried — anything with moisture in it will cloud a casting.
• Nitrile gloves. Not latex: uncured epoxy is a skin sensitiser, and repeated contact is how people develop a permanent reaction to it.
• Abrasive pads for finishing the underside and edges of the demoulded pieces.
• A printed guide covering measuring, mixing, bubbles, temperature, demoulding, and a safety page that comes before the fun part rather than after it.

What you would need that is not included

A well-ventilated space, a level surface where the castings can sit undisturbed for three days, and a room that stays above roughly 21 °C (70 °F). Cold is the hidden variable in resin: below that, the cure slows sharply, the resin is thicker and traps more bubbles, and a casting that would have been fine turns out soft.

You will also want a dust mask if you sand cured resin, and a bin. Uncured resin does not go down a drain, ever.

Read the guide now

• Why your resin is still sticky: ratio, temperature and mixing

Where it leads

The moulds and mixing equipment are reusable indefinitely, and resin is sold in far larger and cheaper quantities than any starter kit contains. From flat castings the usual next steps are embedding objects, layered pours that set in stages, or resin over a wooden surface — each of which is mostly the same technique with more patience attached.