Lorrie Nowlan started Wood Design by Lorrie 2 years ago when she started working with live edge wood and epoxy resin creating functional art and small tables. She needed a creative outlet for her upcoming retirement and stress relief from a very busy nursing career. And look at her now! When Lorrie saw the call for an epoxy art contest on Instagram she was ready to put her resin skills to the test. She decided to build a table that was ocean-inspired using a cast resin whale base that she picked up at a thrift store for the table base. The outcome was award-winning and Lorrie is thrilled to have found a new favorite resin for her growing epoxy art craft and resin work.
Lorrie’s found thrift shop whale was pretty sad and needed a complete overhaul, which she did using metallic paints, giving the whale and waves some vibrant colors. Lorrie used spalted maple wood for the tabletop because to her it resembled driftwood fitting for the ocean theme. She built a round mold and poured a 4-colored mixed pigment epoxy base consisting of blues, turquoise, and green. Using shells, corals, starfish, crushed shells, an anchor, and netting Lorrie laid out a beautiful inlay, followed by a wave layer and finally a clear epoxy fill. After demolding the table she did a quick retrofit of the table on the base and then proceeded to sand the front and back and then do an epoxy flood coat for the finish. This table was a special tribute to Lorrie’s mom as she, being an artist herself, had taught me the love of water, waves, and ocean. In fact most of the shells in this table she collected off the ocean herself.
Winning her first epoxy art challenge was a massive personal accomplishment for Lorrie. Her whale based table turned out exactly as she had envisioned it and she welcomed many compliments and new followers to her social media accounts. As our winner, Lorrie was thrilled to receive a very generous epoxy credit on her account from TotalBoat and some lovely epoxy tints from the Mixol Total Tint Kit, which she will have already put to use in her current projects. To see more of Lorrie’s ocean-based tables and wood art, check out Lorrie’s Instagram account at @wooddesignbylorrie – she’s just getting started!
A follow-up with Lorrie after a few months of using TotalBoat epoxy finds this review: “I absolutely love the MakerPoxy for my resin art it’s thick it makes fantastic cell on my waves and it delivers incredible results…Jess Crow had the right idea with this formulation and you guys delivered a superb product…I will be ordering more that’s for sure….big thanks again”
