Fun and Easy Resin Cheetah Print Christmas Tree

A few years ago I made the CUTEST Letters to Santa sign and I’ve been hanging it in super cute places in my house ever since. Unfortunately last year it got a bit messed up (y’all know how clumsy I am) and while I could make a new one I decided to make a completely new sign instead… one with Cricut and Resin. SO before we can start on the sign we need a bit of resin… and what’s cuter for Christmas than a Christmas Tree with cheetah print on it?

NOTHING!

So let’s get started with our new little resin Christmas tree so that we can whip up our new Christmas Tree Farm sign.

I can’t wait!

Supplies:

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Step 1: Paint your Mold

As you can see this little Christmas Tree mold has so many cute details!! Little snowflakes and even Cheetah print pattern is embedded into the silicone design so that it will pop when your resin piece is demolded. Of course, you can leave these babies as is and they’ll have a slight sheen difference when you’re finished (think shiny to matte) or you can paint them.

Whether you paint the mold or the resin once it’s demolded is up to you but I decided to paint the cheetah print spots rose gold before we poured our resin… I love how it looks when the color is encased in the resin.

Either way we definitely want all of those little details to pop. We could dust them with mica powder (like we did with the color shifting mica pigment in this cute little trivet) or you could paint the highlighted areas after the resin is cured (like we did with craft paint on this adorable little gnome) but today I decided to use rose gold craft paint to paint all the details first.

Or… pipette the details? They’re pretty deep so instead of trying to paint all those details I used a plastic pipette to drop black paint into the details and then a toothpick to make sure it was spread out thoroughly. I used the same technique to paint the details of this little pumpkin mold last month.. it turned out so cute!

Let the paint dry completely and we’re ready for resin. That rose gold is going to pop against the white of our resin tree!

I decided to leave the snowflakes blank… I’ll either paint them at the end of the project or leave them white depending on how the piece looks at the end. I want the resin tree to be the main focus of our Christmas Tree Sign so I’m not sure if I want all the details on this mold to be highlighted.

Step 2: Mix your Resin

Now that our mold is painted let’s start mixing our resin. I’m using MakerPoxy for this little tree since it’s easy to work with and dries pretty bubble free.

It’s a 1:1 ratio resin which means you’ll use 1 part a to 1 part b… for this project we need about 50ml so we’ll put 25ml of a and 25ml of b into a mixing cup. Then slowly stir your resin for 3 minutes… make sure you’re scraping the sides and bottom of your container to thoroughly mix all parts of the mixture together. Then let it sit for a couple of minutes so that as many bubbles as possible can rise to the surface.

We don’t need multiple colors today so once you’ve mixed your resin you can add a few drops of white craft paint (or green if you’re going for a traditional Christmas Tree). Mix everything together until it looks solid white and you’re good to go. You can pop any bubbles that rise to the top of the cup with your heat gun and then we’ll start pouring!

Bonus Tip: If you’ve never mixed resin before it’s not nearly as intimidating as you’d think! I’ll walk you through all the steps here in my How to Mix Resin for Beginners Tutorial.

Step 3: Pour your Resin

Let’s do the thing!

Now that our white is alllll mixed up we’re going to pour our cute little tree full of resin. Well… actually we’re only pouring about a third of this mold so that’s not quite accurate but you know what I mean.

Since we’re making this little guy to go on a sign we don’t want him to be too chonky… so 50ml will fill this mold about a third of the way up which is perfect for a thin Christmas Tree for our sign. If you want to fill the entire mold you’ll need about 150ml of white… just keep that in mind!

Either way we’re going to pour our resin in a thin stream into our mold. This will help bubbles fill entering the mold and hanging out in all the little spaces!

Pour a thin layer and then using your stir stick to make sure there are no air bubbles trapped in the cheetah print or snowflakes before filling the rest of the mold. We don’t want any gaps or bubbles in our finished tree if a bunch of air bubbles get caught!

A little bit of extra work on this step goes a long way towards a bubble free resin tree!

Once you’re good to go you can go ahead and pour the rest of your resin into your mold and set it aside to cure for 24 hours.

Score!

Step 4: Un-Mold your Resin Christmas Tree

Ready for the best part? After 24 hours your piece should have cured is ready to come out of the mold… this is definitely the most satisfying part of the process. It’s super fun AND you get to see the front of your piece for the first time.

Eek!

Start by peeling the silicone sides away from your resin… then slowly remove the resin from the bottom of the mold.

Once you have a corner free you’ll be able to remove it completely AND get that first look.

Ohhhhh pretty Christmas tree of goodness!

I love the way the rose gold cheetah print looks and the snowflakes are so much whiter than the tree!

I was thinking of painting them pale pink but I think I’ll leave them. They’re so cute!

Step 5: Enjoy!

In this case I used my little Christmas tree as the centerpiece for my new Christmas Tree Farm sign. I love that it makes the sign three dimensional!

I made the vinyl trees the same shape so they alllll match! Of course I could go crazy and make 3 resin trees but I like the layering effect so I’d have to cut into 2 of them… which is 100% doable but this was a much easier solution.

I hope you love it!

I know I do!

If you end up making this little tree let me know down below… I’m off to work on my next resin project!