good morning I'm patty al hafi author of upcycle with decoupage and I'm going to show you how you can make this tray today the video though is more about how you can use your own photographs you use your inkjet printer to make your copy of your photo that you have on your computer or on your camera or your phone the inkjet printer is water-based and it will smear all of the self-serve copiers at any copy store are automatically laser print and they won't run you can dip them in water it's regular paper you don't have to ask them to change the paper out you don't have to go to the counter make at least three copies of what you want to work with just because you want to have a couple of backups and here the supplies we'll be needing for this project you'll need the wood tray and when you find this in the craft store it's just going to be plain wood shallow dish of water for this project I'm going to be using the enviro text light pour on it's a little complicated just a tiny bit complicated to me to use but if you don't feel comfortable with that use any topcoat that you would like if you're going to use the pour on you'll also want to little dixie cups or plastic cups and a magic marker brushes I use this to paint which is the other thing you'll probably want some paint if you don't want to paint the wood you want to leave it bare I would suggest you get some clear gesso you're going to need a hard brayer preferably a lint-free cloth this isn't technically lint-free but I've washed it a hundred times so it's fine and I'm going to be using one of these paper cutters and this is just some dollars for plastic wrap and last but not least decoupage glue you once you've painted or added your clear gesso I would cut this out to fit inside this is just a hair too large for this so once your tray is dry you're going to want to place decoupage glue all on the inside where you're going to just where you're going to put the print if you get it elsewhere like I am doing don't worry about it it dries clear dip your paper into the shallow dish of water and we'll just want to blot it and we're going to lay it face up over where we just place the decoupage glue and you'll want to Center it you may be working with a collage in which case you will have several different photos and you'll want to do a dry run before you place the decoupage glue down so I have this centered pretty well this is why I take the plastic wrap your fingers can actually rip the paper that you're working on you don't want to do that so take a piece of plastic wrap and rub over this so that there are no air bubbles you just want to make sure right now you're just its preliminary press down just make sure everything's in place then we take the brayer and from the center out go all around your image this will push any air bubbles glue clumps anything like that out now just for the purpose of this video I'm keeping this rather plain it's just my copy decoupage inside but I wanted to give you a few other ideas you can always make some copies of maps and this is a map of Paris just because it's got all of these unusual names and places on it or if you'd like if you don't like these edges and all around here you can cut some of your extra copies paper and just extend it out a little bit more this is a picture of a butterfly I took and I might just add something like this or other pictures that I had taken made into laser prints and the next step after this is dried is you want to add at least two more coats and two more coats is fine if decoupage glue let it dry between each coat and I can't stress this enough that decoupage glue has to be completely dry before we put this high gloss finish on here the pour on you now I'm applying this third coat of decoupage glue and I'm trying to keep the brush movements going in the same direction and what I'm also doing is applying it applying the decoupage glue all over the rest of the box because that is going to work as a sealant on the paint and we'll let this dry and then come back to the final step now that this is completely dry I am going to put the two-part resin on which is the pour on you a plastic fork works really well to mix this and you'll notice there are millions of bubbles in here see if you can see this and we're going to pour this on to our surface now you can see I'm pouring it down the center and that's because I know this is going to level out you want to have the box handy I'm sorry I didn't say that in the earlier description of what you need I don't think I mentioned the plastic fork either although anything works to stir this but as soon as we're done with this step we want to put it in the box and this has to dry for at least 12 hours it may take a little longer so I've just poured as much as I'm going to get out of this cup I think onto here now you can use a brush to spread it around or whatever you have you can also just tip this but it is quite thick and it starts to set up quickly now you can see that it's dripping down which is what we want we want to get it to all the corners and points if you drip any over to a side wipe that off as soon as possible now you can still see there's a lot of air bubbles in there that's normal and I'll tell you how we're going to fix that in a second if you do use a brush to move this around a sponge brush is fine but just know that you can't clean this off once you use the sponge brush you're done with that brush you'll have to throw it out now I probably could have used a little bit more than the amount I have here or it may be just the right amount it's really hard to gauge with this actually now the brighter the light the better because you can see if there's any spots that you missed and right now you see how their brush marks in there that will level right out while this is wet but that's a trick you really want to work with this pretty quickly because it does start to get too solid maybe in about five or seven minutes so for now let's just move it all over I can feel there's a lot more in the center here and I want to move that out to these edges if you have any air bubbles and a lot of them start to pop as you're moving the Poron around because you really would rather not have any air bubbles in here once this dries and they will dry in there now you want to lay this as flat as possible and the reason that we will put it in a box is because this works like a dust and hair magnet so wiling to put this away for tonight and I'm going to let it dry I'm going to put it in a room where no one is in it's it's not good to breathe a lot of this even though it doesn't have an odor really I'm going to put it in a bathroom with the door shut the heat on and it'll cure perfectly overnight and if you have any drips just look around in very very bright light and remove any of those drips if you get this on your fingers by the way it's really sticky now you can use nail polish remover and that'll take it off and here's our project for today I just took it out of the box I let it dry or cure overnight now you can see that really high gloss on there like there are a few I'm not sure what that is if it's an air bubble or what-have-you sometimes that can happen but for the most part I'm very happy with this if you've got any questions about this feel free to ask me and in the comments section and as always thank you for subscribing and I hope I've been able to inspire you guys and at the very least help you out and take it easy I'll see you next week you