Ocean Resin Art Trinket Dishes

Ocean Resin Art Trinket Dishes

If you love the beach, today’s craft is for you. In this tutorial, we’re going to talk about how to bring some of that surf-and-sun vibe home with an  ocean resin art trinket dish.

Jewelry trinket trays come in all different shapes and sizes and can be coated with resin to create gorgeous works of art or cast from resin entirely using a tray mold.

Let’s talk about what you need to create your very own ocean art trinket dish.

What You’ll Need:

• ProMarine Supplies Table Top Epoxy Resin
• Crafting sand
• Small crafting shells
• Trinket trays of choice
• Alumilite dyes (White and Translucent Ocean Blue)
• Gloves
• Safety glasses
• Graduated mixing containers
• Stir sticks
• Paper cups

When it comes to choosing a tray, there are honestly a lot of options. With so many to choose from, we decided to go with this adorable little heart-shaped ceramic trinket dish.

Before working with the resin, the first thing that we’re going to do is put on gloves and safety glasses. We will then measure out the ProMarine Supplies Table Top Epoxy Resin into graduated mixing cups. How much you need will depend on the size of your trinket tray, but remember that it’s measured and mixed in a ratio of 1:1 by volume.

With ocean resin art, you end up using a few different colors to simulate the shades of the ocean. We recommend preparing a larger batch of resin ahead of time that you can separate it into smaller cups that can be used for pouring.

Mix side A (resin) and side B (hardener) until the mixture becomes clear and free of striations or swirls. You should mix slowly and scrape the sides and bottoms of the cups to fully incorporate everything.

For this tutorial, we’re going to start by building the shoreline. In a separate paper cup, combine crafting sand and some of the mixed epoxy. Pour the sand where you’d like your shoreline to go. This will serve as a guide for where to start pouring the ocean.

Now we’ll work on the ocean. Start with a small cup of resin and mix in your Alumilite Translucent Ocean Blue dye. You only need a few drops to create vibrant color; if you add too much, it might affect the cure of the project. We also added just a little bit of the Alumilite White dye to make the blue more opaque.

You can also prepare any other colors ahead of time so that you only have to pour. In this case, since the dish is so small, we’re only going to be using the one blue, and the white and clear resin for waves.

Pour your ocean so that it fills up the rest of the space. Don’t fill all the way to the top of the dish, as we’re going to be adding more resin on top.

Before moving on to the waves, we’re actually going to add just a bit more character to the shoreline we’ve created. From our pack of miniature crafting shells, we’re going to pick a couple and place them in the sand. It definitely completes that beach look!

Once that’s done, let the resin cure for about 12 hours.

Then it’s time for the waves. You’ll need that cup of clear resin and the cup of Alumilite White dye and resin mixture.

A good place to start with your wave is along the shoreline. Again, because our dish is so small, we’re going to create one wave to take up the whole space.

Pour a thicker line of clear resin along the shore. Pour a thin line of white resin on top of that. To create that organic flowing look you see in ocean resin art, the next step involves our trusty heat gun!

When you use a heat gun to move the resin around, it’s all about finding the right distance and angle for achieving the look that you want. You may not get what you consider perfect results the first time—and that’s totally okay! Be patient and keep trying until you’re loving how it looks.

Once you find the proper angle and distance for your heat gun to maintain, guide it along the line of clear and white resin. The heat gun will slowly push the resin out, simulating the foamy flow of ocean waves crashing on the shore.

And with that single perfect wave, and a sufficient amount of time curing, your resin trinket trays are complete. Here's how it turned out.

For larger pieces, you can use the same technique to continue layering waves until they’re just right.

Once you’ve got the ocean resin art technique down, you can apply it to a variety of different projects. We’ve seen this style applied not only to a plethora of ocean art trinket trays but also to furniture, wall art, jewelry, keychains, flooring, and more.

If you’d like to learn more about resin trays of all kinds, we have just the blog post for you!

For more resin art inspiration and to share your own works of art, visit us on our social media sites.

Happy crafting!

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