DIY Accessories

Scroll through any craft-focused social media feed, and you will invariably be mesmerized by a specific video: bright, neon, liquid pink and gold pigment being slowly swirled into a massive, crystal-clear, glass-like liquid puddle that eventually cures into a perfectly solid, heavy keychain or trinket tray.

This is the magic of Epoxy Resin.

When executed perfectly, resin art looks like expensive, heavy, factory-made glass. However, when a beginner attempts it blindly, the liquid refuses to harden, permanently remaining a terrifying, sticky, toxic, un-cured jelly filled with thousands of horrible white air bubbles. Pouring resin is entirely a game of strict chemistry and temperature control. Here is the professional blueprint for flawless, brightly colored pours.

If you want to construct heavily customized, beautifully colored little bowls for your entryway table to hold keys, rings, and loose change, you might assume you have to enroll in a massive community college ceramics class.

Throwing real pottery requires an expensive spinning wheel, massive bags of wet, muddy, heavy clay, and access to a dangerous, 2,000-degree industrial kiln to actually bake the bowls into stone.

But if you only need a small "Catch-All Dish," you can completely bypass the ceramic studio by utilizing the greatest modern crafting material ever invented: Polymer Clay. Polymer clay (like Sculpey or Fimo) comes in wildly vibrant blocks of neon color, feels exactly like Play-Doh, never dries out in the air, but chemically cures into a rigid, permanent, waterproof plastic when baked for fifteen minutes in a standard, 275-degree kitchen oven. Here is how to sculpt a marbled masterpiece.

If you are hosting a highly curated, maximalist dinner party, a spectacular floral centerpiece or an expensive linen tablecloth is standard. But if you look at the towering brass candelabras in the center of the table, you will likely see incredibly boring, flat, standard-issue white wax taper candles.

In recent years, luxury home decor stores have begun selling extravagantly hand-painted taper candles—featuring wrapping vines, intricate blooming roses, or bold, colorful geometric check patterns—for up to thirty dollars a pair.

You do not need to spend thirty dollars. You can buy a massive utilitarian box of cheap white emergency candles from the grocery store for five dollars and paint them yourself. However, painting onto physical wax is chemically difficult (paint hates wax). Here is the exact methodology to ensure your vivid colors stick to the candle and burn safely.

The basic orange clay terracotta pot is the absolute holy grail of the houseplant community. Because terracotta is insanely porous, it physically breathes, pulling excess moisture out of the dirt and preventing your expensive Monstera from dying of root rot.

However, from an interior design perspective, staring at twenty identical, dusty orange pots on a living room shelf is incredibly boring.

Painting a terracotta pot is the easiest way to inject massive blocks of bright, modern color into your plant jungle. But if you simply slap neon acrylic paint onto a raw terracotta pot and then water the plant, the water will bleed right through the clay from the inside out and violently tear the paint completely off in massive, rubbery bubbles. To maintain the health of the plant and the durability of the paint, you must execute a strategic seal. Here is the foolproof guide.

Terrazzo—that gorgeous, speckled material comprised of heavy chips of marble and colorful glass set into concrete—is currently dominating modern interior design. You see it on expensive kitchen countertops, luxury flooring, and high-end boutique home decor.

Unfortunately, pouring real concrete and grinding actual quartz and marble shards requires heavy industrial machinery.

However, you can completely fake the high-end terrazzo aesthetic directly on your kitchen table using a miracle material called Jesmonite. Jesmonite is an eco-friendly, water-based acrylic resin that sets rock-hard in twenty minutes (unlike epoxy resin, which takes days to cure and is highly toxic). By casting your own wildly colorful "chips" and suspending them in a stark white Jesmonite base, you can craft heavy, stone-like coasters that look unbelievably expensive. Here is the recipe.