A Useful Tip

One more resin-related tip, and then I think I'm out of tips on that subject.

You can of course cast resin, as the photos on the resin box probably advertise, but you can also brush it on-- that's what I do to coat and protect my pieces. What to use for the brushing-on, though? You can't really clean resin up very easily, so you don't want to use a regular paintbrush. Sponge brushes are a good choice, but if you're doing it often, at a single use each, that's wasteful and will quickly become expensive.

My solution: Go to a local furniture store and be nice to the salespeople (who will be very disappointed that you aren't there to buy something), and ask if they have any scrap foam padding you can have. They use it for moving furniture, and usually there's a pile of it in the back room somewhere. Once you get this foam, a) store it in a closed trashbag so it doesn't get lint on it, and b) cut it into pieces and use them as little foam brushes. There's no handle, of course, so you fingers will get all up in the resin-- but you're wearing your trusty nitrile gloves for safety, so that doesn't matter, right?