Moulds

We did some plaster moulding at the Artsy Craft event and Andrea [being much more organised than me] kindly sent me some buttons she made after she got home.

They are beautiful, really delicate, detailed and thin - so I was inspired to try and make some myself. I wandered round the house looking for things that might make a good cast and in the end I had about 30 objects to try. Then I couldn't find my moulding compound anywhere [I was sure I had a pack somewhere] so eventually I gave in and bought some more in Hobbycraft. Being a greedy sort of person I bought the 300g pack which was a big mistake. I was only going to mix part of the pack but I decided I couldn't estimate half acurately so I kneaded all of it together. I'm not sure if I mixed it for too long or what but before I got more than a third of it used up it went off. Another part of the problem was that I was taking too long to make each mould as I was being stingy with the compound [which is ironic given how much I wasted anyway] so a lot of the moulds I did make are not very good, they either won't stand up because I didn't leave enough material at the base or they leak.

I mixed up some plaster [too much again as it turned out] and poured it into the better moulds. Then the phone rang and by the time I finished talking to my mum the rest had set solid in the mixing jug I was using [it did come out eventually].

Fortunately I also had some purchased moulds of faces otherwise I would have wasted even more plaster.

I also had a go at filling the moulds with molten ute. This is much harder to get runny so most of my moulds are somewhat thick. My heat gun got so hot whilst I was trying to get the ute runnier that it started to melt itself!

These are my favourites - the mould was made from a small face pendant I bought at the Mind Body & Spirit show at Elland Road last Sunday.

I decided to buy some more of the moulding compound and the best deal I could find was on Amazon for 1000g. Turns out it has to come from Germany - hope I don't get stung for customs charges.

And of course after ordering the stuff I was looking for something else and found not one but two packs of moulding compound!

Sara x