Make These Whimsical Bubble Wrap Coasters

On Peter Brown’s Shop Time YouTube channel, he has a Dip It playlist where he creates all sorts of fun objects out of poured epoxy resin, from a bacon-handled vegetable peeler to Oreo cookies encased in cake stand.

For this Dip It video, Peter was mailing out some packages, working with bubble wrap, when he had a thought: “What’s the best thing about bubble wrap? What if you couldn’t do that?” The bubble wrap coaster was born.

The build is quite simple. He first laid down a layer of epoxy resin in his mold frame, embedded a sheet of bubble wrap, let that cure, and then added another layer to cover the wrap. Once thoroughly cured, he marked out his coaster shapes and cut them out on a band saw.

And then Peter’s project had a happy accident. As he was sanding the edges of the coasters, because he had apparently made the bottom layer of resin too thin, that layer and the bubble wrap pulled away from the top layer. Oops. But after peeling the wrap thoroughly away, what he was left with was a negative impression of bubble wrap that still looks like encased bubble wrap from the top. So, the illusion still works, even with this mistake, so he went on to finish them up this way (removing the bottom resin layer and the wrap, leaving the impression of the bubble wrap in the top layer).

Peter says that if you want to ensure that this doesn’t happen, you’ll want to make sure to lay down a thicker layer of resin to begin with. I definitely think the “joke” is funnier if you have actual bubble wrap encased in resin, but either way, it’s still a fun build and you end up with a cool (if frustrating) conversation piece.

You can see all of Peter’s Dip It series on his YouTube channel and on his website.