Pretty Little Ideas #3 - An Old Planter, Semi Precious Pebbles, And Epoxy Resin
Not just good as new, but better than ever.
We found this old planter at a garage sale in New Jersey. The paint was chipped and the shelves were half filled with what used to be a decorative clay.
Bought it for a few dollars, brought it home and got to work. Chiseled out the remaining clay bits. Then gave it a light sanding and two or three layers spray paint job with an outdoor, weather resistant matte black spray paint. Afterwards, each shelf looked like this.
Except without the puddle of dried epoxy
Then the question was what did we fill each shelf with. I knew all along I wanted it to be semi-precious stones, which the epoxy would make look permanently wet. So we purchased 1/2 pound each of 3-7mm, tumble polished:
Tigereye
Amethyst
Lapis Lazuli
Red Garnet
Malachite
And Red Jasper
We ran out of epoxy before we could put in the jasper, which we'll do at a later date, but this is what the loose rocks looked like.
We purchased this epoxy and some cheap mixing supplies.
Then we glued down the stones on the base of each shelf so they covered the whole bottom. We used elmers glue, let it dry completely, and then mixed and poured the epoxy.
Definitely lay down a plastic sheet when you do this as you will invevitably get some sticky stuff somewhere.
When the epoxy is poured we used a hair dryer to pop bubbles for about ten to fifteen minutes until the epoxy dried.
Several hours later we sprayed the dried epoxy with a high gloss ultraviolet protected finish. And you have the final product.
The result is startlingly beautiful.
The epoxy makes the stones look permanently wet and the UV protection will assure they keep their color for a long time.
Now it lives in our home, unlike any other piece of furniture you could purchase. The clear epoxy/semi-precious stone combo is a powerful one, but clear epoxy is a great decorative solution to re-purpose many pieces of furniture you might otherwise throw out.
Looks great! My Dad makes these sorts of things out of recovered pallets.
Thanks - it's crazy what you can make out of junk with a bit of imagination - we have a bunch of re-purposed things like this around the house.
Beautiful!
Thanks you!
That's cool. I did something similar with some collectible art coins and a small side table.
coins are another popular choice - the epoxy makes everything look great
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