Circuit Boards in Resin!

Hey everyone! So I recently wrote about a repurposing project I've been working on where I took apart an antique organ that's been in the family for a while and turned it into a wine bar/coffee bar (you can read about that here). Well I had saved all the stuff I took off of the organ, even the tiny little hardware bits, and used them in some VERY COOL resin projects!

The coolest parts by far were these circuit boards, and there were a lot of them, so the plan was to try and make coasters and trays with them!

With resin, if you're adding an object into it, you want to seal off any holes in the objects in order to prevent air bubbles forming, so I coated all the circuit boards in mod-podge first. The first attempt of adding the boards into the resin was an intentional test run to see how it would work, so I picked out the ugliest of the circuit boards to use for that! Well that test run turned out HORRIBLE! There were a lot of different factors that needed to be adjusted such as heat used with the resin, adding more sealant, getting rid of bubbles, etc. The second time around went much much better! The first set of coasters used some circuit boards as well as some little copper pieces I made a design with...

I wanted an amber looking color for one of the sets and the color turned out perfect! I had to mix a few different colors in order to make the shade I wanted! The other set I still wanted to look earthy and natural but with a little more color pop. I also ended up doing U.V. resin on all the little pieces before using them in the coasters!

After pouring those, I wanted to get as many things made as I could while I was in resin mode, so I did a couple different sets of coasters as well as a pencil holder!

The circle coasters have sheet music in it that belonged to my great great grandma! Those had to be coated in mod-podge a couple times before being added in to the resin. The sheet music was definitely fickle with how it reacted as it cured... Some of them stayed in totally fine but others had parts that kept rising to the top and not staying in the resin, so not all of those ones turned out very well. For the pencil holder, after I added the resin in the mold, I put it a ton of hardware pieces I had removed from the organ and the circuit boards.... it turned out looking so cool!

It took me DAYS to get all the little pieces off of the circuit boards, but it was definitely worth it! They turned out to be my favorite thing to add in. I also added in some copper flakes just for some extra pizazz. Eventually I made four or five more of these pencil holders because they looked so cool and they're functional!

A few days later I started making the next batch! I tried a few different patterns with various pieces from the organ, and even made a couple boxes and attempted my first tray!

It was hard getting the resin color to be exactly the same as the first time, but I think I got it pretty close!

Most of the little pieces I used in these ones were attached to the keys, and I didn't initially think I would use those pieces because they just looked kind of plain, but I didn't throw them out just in case.... I'm definitely glad I saved them because they turned out being perfect for making cool patterns.

The mold for the box was very thin so I could only fit the smallest pieces in there as well as some more copper flakes.

I also tried out a different set of coasters with sheet music and did a couple different colors in each mold in order to create a border on the coasters that was opaque but still have the main part be transparent.

There was definitely a lot of trial and error because of the wide range of objects being put in to the resin, and everything reacts differently, so I would say only about 80% of what was made worked out!

I was also able to add on some light up parts to some of the pencil holders, and others had a little light block to go under them....

There was still A LOT more I did with the pieces of the organ and resin, but I'll have a whole separate post for those!