How To Make Resin Petri Dish Style Drink Coasters

Want to make some cool resin petri dish coasters for your home? They can be a work of art on a stand, or a practical accoutrement to prevent marks on your furniture. Win-win!

You will need:

Resin + hardener kit
Latex/not rule gloves
Silicone coaster mold
Plastic cups
Stir sticks (Popsicle or chopsticks work well)
Alcohol ink
Artist torch

Put on your disposable gloves, and measure your resin and hardener in precisely equal amounts by volume. I use a digital mail scale instead of a measuring cup. I find it us more precise and eliminates curing issues.
Mix resin and hardener very well for at least 3 minutes, scraping the bottoms and sides of your mixing vessel as you go. I use clean unused chop sticks from our takeout extras.

Fill each section of your mold halfway with resin mixture. These molds make a nice large coaster. You’ll want nearly 3 ounces of resin mixture in each circle.
Gently torch the surface of the resin, to get rid of any bubbles. Don’t hold the flame in one spot and don’t hold it right against the mold edge. There will likely still be a couple bubbles near the bottom. They just add handmade charm!

Now we get to the inky part.

Right away:
Drip about a dozen drops of white alcohol ink onto your coaster. You can manipulate the design a bit by placing drops in center or around edges.
Now grab your main COLOR, and place a drop or two on each of the white drops. I used just two shades of blue with the white for these coasters.

You can add a second drop of a different color on top of the original first color, or you can add a second drop if white and place the second color on top of that. Experiment!

Place your coaster molds on a flat surface in a room free of dust, hair, and high humidity. You want it dry and clean. Let your resin cure at least 24 hours.
After at least 24 hours, you can pop your resin coasters out of the molds.
You might want to run some fine grit sandpaper over the sharp edges that will make the bottoms of the coasters.
And there are your coasters! You could glue cork or felt circles to the bottoms to prevent any scratches on your wood surfaces if you like.