How to Try New Media – Silicone Casting pt 5

With my mold ready to go, I poured the catalyst into the cup with silicone and then I started to use one of the house paint sticks, but quickly discovered that it was too big for the cup. As I was mixing, I realized I needed something thin and small enough to let me scrape around the sides of the cup so that all the silicone got mixed evenly. Suddenly I remembered that I had a few palette knives around, one of which was shaped more like a butter knife, so I grabbed that from my painting stuff and it turned out to be perfect for mixing.

How to Try New Media – Silicone Casting pt 4

So now that I had my mold all ready to go, the last thing to do before using it was to figure out how much silicone I would need for each bracelet. This time I wanted a slightly more accurate number, because I would be using far less silicone and thus far less catalyst, so if I was off in my numbers it would have a greater chance of impacting whether the bracelet would cure or not. 

How to Try New Media – Silicone Casting pt 3

Now that I knew how much silicone to use, it was time to set up a work station to do the mixing and pouring of the silicone into the mold container. I used my garage because it was an area that would be left undisturbed for as long as it took the silicone to cure (to harden into a solid) and was somewhere that would allow any fumes to safely escape.

How to Try New Media – Silicone Casting pt 2

Based on my discussions with the salesperson at Sculpture Supply Canada, I purchased a few supplies and tools:

• Silicone + catalyst (needed to turn the silicone from a viscous liquid into a solid)
• Mold release (necessary to spray inside the mold so that my cuffs/bracelets would pop out later)
• Pigments to colour the silicone (both regular colours and UV-reactant colours)
• A DVD that went over the most common types of casting, including silicone casting

There were other tools that I needed for this project, but a number of them were more common household items that could be purchased at a local dollar store or hardware store for a much lower price than most art stores.  And these tools and materials would come later, as there was a few steps that came up before I got to the casting stage.

How to Try New Media – Silicone Casting pt 1

When I’m doing a convention, it’s like a mini art show with a carefully picked selection of my art on the table, and one of the more common comments I get is “Wow, you did all this art?” because what ends up on the table is usually art that covers a variety of media (jewelry, prints, wearables, sculpture, etc) rather than just one or two types of art with different subjects. The main reason for this is that I consider myself to be an artistic experimenter and jack of all trades.