Custom pin tray- how I did it!

I made this pin tray as a custom order for http://lovealittle.etsy.com . It has magnets to attach it to the arm of her sewing machine and is shallow enough for easy access to pins when sewing.

First off I needed it to be no bigger than 7cm x 8cm. This ended up being 7cm square. I needed to make something the same shape to make the moulds from to pour in the resin, so I took this square purple bangle, drew around it on perspex and then cut it out with a band saw. I peeled off the backing film and superglued the bangle to the plastic. Once dry, I filled the gaps around the outside edge with milliput. Once dry I sanded it down againso that the edges were flat.

I then popped it into a tupperware tub, closed off half of it with plastercine so to preserve the ever-expensive silicone, mixed and poured the silicone over the top of the model. The next day I popped out the model and voila! a mould 🙂

I chucked a load of pins into the mould (after tidying up the raggy edges with a knife) and poured in the resin. Once set I added the magnets and added another thin layer to semi-embed them and hold them in place. Once set, I popped it out of the mould and it looked like the above!

I then sanded the sides down to make them less pointy and sprayed the back and sides with lacquer to bring back the shine.

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