Tissue Paper Night Light!

The process for making this is part craft project and part woodworking. To start, we'll channel your inner preschooler and break out the food coloring!

To help the coloring wick through the material I chose to use some denatured alcohol. In my original tissue I used water. Both worked well, but the thinking with the alcohol was that it would dry faster and could then be cast in resin sooner. Any moisture in the tissue would ruin the casting. So a dry tissue is important!

I start with a simple tissue, wet it down and add some food coloring

I add the color in random patterns, then just fold the tissue over on and added some pressure. In a minute or so, it had saturated all the white areas and made a very colorful medium to work with.

Having grade school flashbacks yet?!

The mold is made from melamine. I buy it at the Home Depot in the shelving isle.  This one measured 3”x 6” x 1” and was put together with screws and taped around the outside. This also the first time I use a mold release agent. It worked well, and allows me to use this mold again in the future.

Cut to size and add some tissue to the mold

The epoxy resin used here is West System 105 resin with the 207 (clear) hardener. It didn’t take much to put a small layer over the tissue paper. Once poured you will have some bubbles in the resin that you will need to pop. Applying a bit of heat with a heat gun will do the trick.

Using a heat gun will remove most of the bubbles suspended in the resin. 

There are always some micro-bubbles in my casting I cannot remove. I’m okay with that. Now set this aside for 24 and allow it to cure.

For the light portion, I simply used the bits from a Dollar Store night light. I was an easy process of cutting off the clip and now we’ve got everything we need for our mod.

clamp it down and keep your fingers clear.

Once the epoxy had cured I cut out a shape I liked at the band saw and used the disc sander to refine it. This one was a simple dome, but you could make it as elaborate as you please.

cut whatever shape you like

After that I sanded the front and back to a high shine with wet sanding. I started with 400  grit and ended with 12000 grit acrylic polishing pads. Glue on your clip with a dab of epoxy and you’re good to go!

Takes about 20 minuted to run through the grits and give you a high polish.

Now you’ve elevated such meager material as tissue paper into something you can actually call art.

Completed night light!

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