Tutorial: How to get bubbles out of epoxy {and make an awesome coffee table}

Hey Guys! It’s ME again… Beth, from Sawdust and Embryos! It’s great to be back, and I’m ready to throw down another tutorial for ya! Sooooo, here’s how it starts. You wouldn’t know it by looking at my house, but I think I have all the warnings signs of becoming a hoarder, because:

A) I value/keep/display things that are sentimental to me, or things that carry a special memory.
B) I ‘gather’ things that MAY be useful someday. Things like this:

Yep, that’s a stack of credit cards from my college days. When I was young and silly, I used to open a store card to get the 10% off my purchase, and then I would immediately pay it off, close the card, and stash it away with the rest… for a future project!!! DUH! It seemed perfectly logical at the time.

Being a lover of stained glass and mosaics… one day, lightening struck when I realized that a mosaic could be made of ANYTHING! Broken china, tile samples, colored glass, old pottery, broken mirror, and most definitely… cut up credit cards!!! At this point I’m feeling so satisfied by how I’ve validated one singular part of my ‘stashing habit’. Yes, let’s call it stashing.

First things first… snip snip!

(NOTE! Think of how liberating this project could be for you emotional spenders!)

After cutting each card into randomly shaped shards, I started haphazardly laying them out on the surface of out little coffee table, leaving a slight space between each. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I wouldn’t have quiiiiiite enough to cover the whole top surface, so I did what any perfectly normal person would do… I took a mirror off my wall and broke it! Perfect filler! (and I should point out that since then, I’ve had remarkably good luck).

Once I had all the little pieces arranged in a way that I call ‘purposefully random’,  I tediously lifted each one and put a little dot of glue on the back to hold it in place for the next step.

Next, we mixed up our epoxy that we bought at our local hardware store. Made me feel a bit like a chemist!

Of course you know I didn’t take a before picture of this little table we decided to use. I’m classy that way. But it has a perfect little ‘lip’ around the edge, which will serve to corral all the thick goopy epoxy that we dumped over all the bits of credit cards and mirror! (Sorry about the following fuzzy-ish photo).

Should you choose to try this, plan on throwing away any bowls and mixing utensils you may utilize. Using an old plastic spatula, we spread around the thick mixture so that it reached all the corners and covered evenly. Kinda like spreading brownie batter into a pan!

Then Nick had the opportunity to play with fire… his FAVE. If you don’t have a blow torch, borrow one from your redneck neighbor. There will be tiny bubble here and there, and the heat from the blow torch squelches them out. What a fun word! SQUELCH. Use it in a sentence today.

Warning: Fire has a tendency to be hot. Consider using caution and common sense.

Finally, we stood back to admire our creation!

After letting it set overnight, the epoxy was rock hard and glossy-awesome! And we’re left with a very custom, colorful, functional conversation piece!

Thanks for stopping by, and we hope you drop in to our blog Sawdust and Embryos and have a look around! Happy weekend!